The Last Breakfast

Molly asks gently, weirdly curled up in her rolling chair with knees jutting; asks where I was so late last night. I know I owe her that - the thought of me being anywhere kills her these days - her heart crippled by vows and promises and such. Marriage is like an iron lung for trust. People gasp when you wheel that wicked thing down the streets with you; into restaurants and jewelry galleries and if Molly could pick it, the set of Newsies with falsetto's akimbo! I wince at the question; though not because of my answer - I feel wretched that she has to ask it in her faked cool voice. I owed it to her - we are doing this new 50/50 thing that seems to be working, and part of the deal is that I can't sleep around. I told her about how I am trying recover my voice, my penchant for writing, and all of the personality that goes with it. It started by making certain that every night I would purge the valves and told what needed to be told. This began the era of bridge burning necessary to start a new city over the charcoal of yesterday.

Her face is bent, slowly gnawing at her cheek, eyes distant and somewhere past the screen. He wonders if the tile bathrooms and high ceilings aren't enough, because I always write of unhappy things anyway, and wasn't I too happy now to write. In fewer words, I say yes, there is too much sugar happiness here for it to happen. Too many comfy couches and ottomans, too few packed suitcases and escape plans. Her words gurgle out now, between tears perhaps.

Her fingers twiddle, picking each other apart with rough fingernails and pinching tips. Nervous energy makes her look stupid. Sometimes the fingers, sometimes toes, last time she rocked back and forth like a toy horse or autistic. Unbearable physical strategies for someone who lost patience months ago. She has some sugared rum drink there, her breath like fermented fruit, each "H" hissed and prolonged for my misery.

I said I needed a bleak landscape to be alive in the way I was made for. I wondered if that is why I moved to this wasteland. Not really an action and adventure type, but instead perhaps a lover of change; a moving image, a stereoscopic version of this deep dark tunnel we trudge.

Molly cried a lot these days. Her head was a mire of these things. Knowing what she had on her hands - wild animals are indeed best kept outside.