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Glinting Barb

Reading Admiring Silence by Adbulrazak Gurah and loved these lines about how people prime for arguments in intimate relationships:

She always was good with phrases, although this one she picked up somewhere. When she found a little phrase, she polished it and rubbed it until it was hard and glinting. Then she kept it by her in case she needed to blind me with her cleverness. I don’t think she did it to be cruel. It was just that she liked to win her arguments, and not always without charm.

The frustrations of dreams that did not come true. the imagined future that did not turn into reality can indeed turn into fits of jousting with each other, trying to coax sparks of life in what is dead and gone. Sometimes this the only thing that keeps the relationship alive - these barbs that sting and bleed, demonstrate the signs of life of which there is no other evidence.

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