The wind howled outside like kids screaming on a roller coaster. The sound splashed against the window, tidal waves of wind... To picture you inhaling is like seeing your blood. There’s a hollow hurt between my shoulder blades. I squeeze my eyes, trying to squeeze you out... I press the base of my palms deep into my eye sockets, hard against the bone, until I feel blood collect beneath the surface of the skin and bruise.
He brought his portable bunny-eared 12inch television to the coffeeshop’s lobby area and pulled up an arm chair. He propped his booted feet up on one of the small round low tables and watched the highlights from some baseball game in Canada. His belly sat on top of his thighs and rose and fell with every labored breath. I imagined his wife had told him to get out, he was in the doghouse, and so even though he still sleeps next to his cold cold wife at night—only because his back problems wouldn’t permit even one night spent on the couch—he spends all of his time elsewhere. At work behind his steel desk at the nut canning facotry. In his comatose mother’s kitchen, making himself a meal of lentil soup and left-over turkey. And in the posh coffeeshop, setting up shop like some lame window display, confusing the young co-eds coming in to study and the caffeine addicted mothers-of-6.
