It’s boring and expensive not being invited anywhere. So he threw lunches but they were more like dinners, seeping into the last bits of sun that beamed through the windows he pulled the blinds on to conserve the coolness he’d invited in.
She was easily affected by boredom but found pleasure in sitting still under the sun and enjoyed how the massive burning star lifted the heat up to the surface of her skin.
She liked having few friends and many lovers. There were five wine bottles collected since she’d moved in. They lined the tile countertop of her small corner kitchen and didn’t include the three rosés diminished in seconds and the one tequila bottle they had drunk on the balcony.
How many more would be emptied out over long hauled discussions in the late of evenings? The possibility excited her. And then she was sad.
C’est moi. Engulfed by laughter. How it always blasts from the deepest part of my gut and up my belly, breaking through my two big front teeth. It’s the only thing I ever let out. The only truest expression that I cannot contain, even if I tried.
My pain escapes me in a laugh. A shot ha followed by a sigh. Distressed? A slight smirk will form as I press my lips together to let out the air that’s attempting to suffocate me. I’ll laugh even when I’m being mean. Mostly. And when I’m sad — terrorized by the pitfalls of life— that’s when the biggest symphonies of laughter make their way through.
But my god how I have adoration for the laughs that produce tears that will not cease. They grow louder with each attempt to simmer down its notes. There’s also the laughs of relief after a really good cry. The laughter that is to say: now, now that wasn’t so bad. Life will continue, there will be more laughs to have.
We ate pomegranates on the balcony, covered in its fuchsia juice.
I watched you crack open the shell and set the liquid free to slowly wander down your wrist. And I followed the trail up your arm to your eyes, crinkled from the smoke of the spliff held between your lips. And you mumbled about the mess.
What a mess.
What a mess we were making. We didn’t even know it then.
What a mess we made. Are you surprised we were capable of a catastrophe?
What a mess we made unbeknownst to the pomegranate lake of fuchsia juice. I wonder if your sock still carries the dye.
A thought that has kept my mind perpetuating forward like a sports car looping down a winding country road: The origin of wo(man) and the bible’s account of adam and eve is saturated in a fuck up. She eats the apple, god gets wicked mad, or disappointed that a woman would choose to engage in the perpetual battle between good and evil for in between the two opposing forces is knowledge, and then casts the rest of humanity to repent for their entire lives.
Already?
Mom looked like she had in her baby photos. The ones where you can see the moisten tear ducts looking straight at the camera lens. Those photos where the glisten of a tear threatening to set free is captured.
She wore the same expression that falls tragically on a child’s face after learning Santa does not in fact exist.
But in this case it was that love did not necessarily exist, at least not long enough for a new life to form. Nope. Love had yet to prevail as it did so many times in the made-for-tv films she watched.
The life of a single woman in the 21st century didn’t always enthusiastically welcome a ring on her finger, or the ring of a wedding bell and for that matter, a ring attached to a baby pacifier.
Nope.
Dad, on the other hand, held tightly onto the steering wheel of the car as if he’d just been handed over control of a rocket headed nose first into the earth’s soil. A failed engine the culprit.
*this is a developing story
He didn’t keep my winter coats. I left them there. That’s what I told everyone, especially myself. The disillusioned state carried on. Who knows where the winter coats are now, but the relationship had ended as one tosses a q-tip into the trash bin. It was never sought after again.
It had missed its shot, and the culprits, too lazy to retrieve the q-tip, left it there on the cold tile to gather dust. Too weary and too confused over where they had ended up. In a foreign country. In a new language. With him. Fighting. The crying. The palookas of misdirected anger. An argument about toilet paper that had gone unpurchased. A cigarette ash that had missed the ashtray. It’s all your fault. They had each wanted to scream at one another but really, it was best said to themselves – to their reflection amidst the post-scorching-shower fog they attempted to hide themselves in. To somehow time travel in the shower’s clouds of steaming hot air to the beginning when they were out of reach of time’s unruly grasp. Until it was the end.
So as to not smoke her lungs to a crisp, she unwrapped the chocolate. But the cigarette remained on her mind. And she contemplated, or rather drew up a mental list on the cons of smoking. No. 1: smell. The stench would cling to her hair and as she’d fall into a slumber, the smell of stale cigarette would seep into her nostrils. This wasn’t a convincing argument to deter the craving for a smoke. What else was there to persuade against the intimate and fleeting outing with nicotine aside from the absolute obvious?
My mother bought me the sterling silver ring with a peace sign that has been the closest witness to my life’s events at a Seattle market in 2008. She got one for herself, though she never wore it much after that day. Mine, however, has formed an imprint on my right ring finger. A thin, burrowed mark resembling a race track wraps around. The ring has only ever left my finger on one occasion: the day I got surgery for a broken leg, approximately four hours. It promptly found its place back once I woke up from the anesthesia. How could it miss anything more?
The silver ring with a peace sign has seen many things, whether it wanted to or not. It accompanied me on a flight back from France as I quietly cried looking out over the clouds, its silver coating cuddled into my face as I hid tears from fellow passengers. It’s clung to the side of toilet bowls as I puke my guts out, the stench of tequila infiltrating the bathroom. It’s been twirled and lifted, on and off, as anxiety swims to the surface of my skin.
The ring has been with me at my worst. There is no doubt. As a peace symbol, it should offer a reminder to adhere to diplomatic standards. However, it’s seen me launch bottles and books across a room, cringing as they smashed against the wall. “Peaceful,” it whispered in an attempt to sink the notion into my soul through my finger it’s called home for over 10 years.