“I don’t think I can throw this away yet.”
When I slid the drawer open, a small square of plastic glinted back at me. Not sticky, not dusty. Manufactured July 2021, good until next year. Seventeen millimeters, extra-close fit. The one Min-seok bought and never used.
I brushed it with a fingertip and felt the wrapper shiver, as if whispering, I’m still alive.
The temperature of restless silicone
That night Min-seok took an endless shower. When the water stopped, I heard him sit on the edge of the bed.
“Tonight… shall we?” he asked.
Instead of answering, I stared at his thigh—one red droplet racing down still-damp skin. A sharp inhale. Then, suddenly:
Will I end up trapped inside that silicone too?
The thought slid through my body like melted wax.
The naked truth left inside a white envelope
This is about Min-seok’s cousin, Sua. She divorced last winter after five years of marriage. The reason was absurdly simple: “There wasn’t a single empty condom box.”
Her husband had hidden boxes everywhere—beside the bed, in the glove compartment, between books. Yet every seal remained intact. Sua slit one open in court: “Thirty-six boxes, two-hundred-sixteen pieces. None used.” She offered it as evidence: You never wanted me.
The courtroom tittered, but the laughter in people’s eyes was unfocused, trembling.
Someone’s separation anxiety, someone’s static shock
Hye-jin, 38, a bank teller, still carries a condom in her wallet. Nine years married, three years sleeping in separate beds. The condom is regular size, flesh-toned, the packet soft with humidity. At the supermarket checkout she wonders, Did the cashier notice? The part-timer only rattles it into the bag. In her gasoline-scented car, Hye-jin sometimes opens her wallet to check.
Still here.
Fear and longing share the same syllable.
Why we are drawn to this rubber talisman
A condom promises not sex but the end. Locked inside latex, everything is safe, everything is controlled. Thus, within the endless contract of marriage, it becomes the final punctuation mark.
Only when unused does it blaze like the last spark of a firework. Tear one away and the end inches closer; therefore we don’t tear. The terror that the moment we confirm the ending, the relationship itself may finish.
Yet that same square is also proof of desire: I am still ready to want.
And so we devour one another—and ourselves.
Whose tremor still clings to the thigh?
You slipped the packet back into the drawer before Min-seok’s gaze could catch it. On the bed you closed your eyes together. His fingertip brushed your ankle—cold.
In that instant you asked, “When we finally use it… who will tear it open first?”