Happy Meals
BREAKFAST
I didn’t have much sleep but I was up. I had a dream, he left me but I brushed it off. I have a lot of them and I never get around to telling him that but we argue enough about things that it just seems redundant to tell him that my fears are with me even as I sleep.
Bathroom rituals, around my ankle a gift and then out of the house. It was sunny and then it rained and then it was sunny again. People, people, people. I wonder what they think about.
I forgot to charge my iPod but it soldiered on with me until I get to where my friend told me to be at 9am. I’m a little late but he’s gonna be more than an hour late so that should be fine. I don’t even take my headphones off as I order. Big Breakfast with a cup of hot cocoa.
The sun is up but beads of rain cling to the glass. I stare at it. I get so addicted to the banal.
I don’t know their names but I remember the people smoking outside, sitting on the ledge of a broken fountain beneath concrete.
I remember the four other people eating inside. There’s a woman, sitting on the table across mine, cradling her phone with her shoulder while she pours maple syrup on the pancakes on the Styrofoam plate that’s still on the tray about half a foot too far from her to be doing this without looking awkward. There’s another woman, on the table across the door, reading the newspaper. There’s a man sitting on the table to my left, also wearing headphones reading printouts. On the table behind him, a woman in scrubs looking exhausted or empty or perhaps both.
I wonder if they notice me. I wonder if they’ll remember a detail. As for me, I can’t help it. Time and I have a special relationship. I have no control over where I am.
The frost on the window carries me to the future and I imagine being here with him, somehow. Maybe someday we can be a little bit older, sitting and at ease next to each other. Maybe we’re talking, maybe we’re just quiet. Maybe I’ll rest my head on his shoulder, maybe he’ll plant a kiss on my head, maybe we just sit there.
Maybe we’ll just be there, calm through storms because we have what we need.
But the past stains these fantasies with gripping details, like how very difficult it was for the lamp to ward off the dark that was with me as he quietly told me that he had told her he loved her.
When it’s quiet and slow like this, I am able to bring myself to the present and it is here that I always wish to stay. Things are real here. He is here with me, without the burden of how we started or where we will go. No room for doubts, no room for hesitance. He is here. We are both here.
Here.
A cup of cocoa. Fried rice. A burger patty. Scambled eggs. Hash brown.
I sat there and thought of where I was. I thought of how much I wanted to be where I was and I could feel the quiet flow of blood in my veins. This is now, without all of the worries of then.
I felt the weight of the gift on my ankle. This is now, with the promise of later.
I stared at the moisture on the cup. I am here. A moment. Mine.
LUNCH
There were arguments before this and there will be arguments after.
Lunch is spent sitting together sharing a plate of burrito. He looks a little pale, I’m not sure if it’s because of his ails or because he is worried about his ails. I nervously touch a small portion of his back because I trust that he understand that I’m more concerned than this. This is no longer because I find touch awkward but because I am afraid of the consequences of letting my skin linger on his.
We banter. We converse. We listen. I dance to the rhythm of our thoughts. The melody soothes me.
I want to take his hand and move with him but a knock interrupts the music.
And then, on a bench under a canopy of leaves, silence played con dolore.
Slowly, I sing a lament.
My hands move, conducting an orchestra of syllables that clumsily knock over each other because the air is slick with tears. Passionately, I try to describe to him what I saw.
An old man, embittered and burned finding a reason to risk his heart again in such a short amount of time for someone he knew very little about.
The leaves of trees swayed to my anguish, filled with the emptiness I felt when I was cast aside and left to piece myself together. Tasked since to repair the cracks that continue to grow everyday.
The words dry my throat and I sat there, waiting. Hoping he will quench it with his.
DINNER
He stands there, the lower hem of his shirt tucked under his chin while his fingers inelegantly fix the buckle of his belt before he threads it through his pants.
Other people marvel at the sight of… I don’t know. But this is where I find beauty. Idle moments that people could care less about. Seeing people when they think no one is looking. I work for these moments. An awkward intimacy that sex, fucking and even making love cannot measure up to.
I hold on to it as long as I could, following his footsteps to the waiting cab. I slip my arms around him and breathe everything in. There is very little of him that is truly mine, perhaps even much less than I think but I will whisper into every pore that I am strong enough. That the situation can break me as much as it wants but that each shattered part will fight for this.
I don’t always believe this. My thighs ache in protest but I am here. Still here. Now.
I remember he orders without ketchup, I remember he asks for extra salt. I remember he likes sitting where he can see people. I remember because he took the effort to tell me and show me.
There are other people around us but he is here. I am hoping that we will all have someone who will remember the spot on our heads where our hair seems thinnest and somehow, I’ve devoted myself to that task for him.
On his wrist, a gift. A small one. Not big, not imposing. A small gift with just enough weight to make him feel that he is never and will never be alone.
I know that maybe my efforts are futile, he has been burned far too many times. Maybe, she has already cleansed him by just existing so it becomes even more futile.
But I know too that it is a hard feeling to shake and in the quiet moments when he can’t remember how to overcome it, I want to help him recall that he is never without.
Alone is a hard feeling to shake, you see. I sat next to an empty chair and observed all the beauty everywhere. Anything to help keep me breathing. Anything to help me forget that I am burning. Anything to pull strength from so I can keep my promise to him.
On my wrists, white lines.
Fictionalized Facts 