In the future we have a pack of dogs, all of whom know how not to get cactus spurs stuck in their paws. They nose scorpions around in the dirt, but one of them gets bitten. His nose grows three times its size, and he turns out fine. We let him sleep in the bed after that, even though you hate it, even though you say you can’t breathe with both of us in there, even though you say this is the reason you wanted a life where you can go anywhere and be with anyone anytime you want, and anytime you see a woman you desire, you can take her to bed where you can breathe because after breakfast, it’s over, and permanently new.
You order room service as a courtesy: 2 oranges juices, yogurt, and berries, a muffin you won’t eat. “I don’t eat breakfast,” she says. (The ones who do don’t yet know yet how to conceal their expectations.) She uses her fingers as a comb, proving how disentangled she is, how unprepared she was. She is in your shirt, half-buttoned, and has artfully arranged the berries in the shape of a heart in your empty bowl.
In the future, your real life, the berries are always there in a basket in the fridge; you know where they are. You don’t have to order them. Dogs circle in hopes for a gift from gravity. I hang the beginnings of your sentences out to dry in the beige sun. The ends of your sentences rinse and spin in my heart, which I’ve arranged in your empty bowl in whatever shape they take. I let the wind advertise the part about how you love me, and I wash the other part someone else has dirtied. I wash the lipstick stain of how I am not enough.
MP3: Dvotchka-How It Ends (Live with the Colorado Symphony)
posted by holly.
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