Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche
A Cup Of Sugar
I have been seeing a woman and our relationship has turned into a falling apart house with the rain coming through the roof and bloating the wood floors. I still love her. Her love for me has left and gone someplace else.
I think about purchasing a butterfly net from an antique store and going around the suburbs of Seattle, trying to catch her love for me. I would put her love for me in a bottle and place it in her coffee when she isn’t looking. I try not to think about this, because it is a very stupid thing to think about.
She has not returned my calls.
She lives in a house with many rooms. Her parents are rich and bought her that house and that's why she lives there.
This morning I walk to her house. I had not planned to walk to her house this morning but my love for her is a small hole inside of me that has turned into a compass with a single arrow and that arrow points towards her house.
It is a cloudy day and there is nothing of any importance happening inside of my head.
I knock on her door. Her door is large and wooden and carved with little pictures like frozen flowers. The person who carved the door died some years back, for it is an ancient house, and everyone involved with its construction no longer exists.
I can hear movement inside of the house. She is getting up from the kitchen table and walking over towards the door to open it.
"Hello" she says.
"Hello,” I say.
"Why are you here?” she asks.
"Could I borrow a cup of sugar?"
I do not need a cup of sugar, but I can sit down on a chair in her kitchen and watch her as she gathers the sugar and places it in a container and maybe that will be enough.
“Alright,” she says, and I follow her into the house.
She is wearing a pair of sweatpants. On the back of her sweatpants are written some words. I do not want to read the words, for the words are closer to her than I will ever be again.
Her house is very neat and organized. The tops of the tables are empty except for symmetrical candles. The chairs have no books on them. There is no dirt on the ground. There are no stray articles of clothing strewn about, all are hiding in their proper closets.
I wish that her place was not so well put together, that piles of dirty dishes filled the sink, that empty cans littered the kitchen and floors, that old shoes sat scattered by her front door. Maybe then her love for me would not have left.
I sit down on a chair at her kitchen table and watch her as she gets the sugar. She fishes the sugar out of the cabinet and with a measuring cup transfers some of it into a plastic bag which used to hold broccoli or cucumbers. She does this in a very precise way. It is like she is an actress in a film called, "A woman, who is gathering sugar for a man, whose love for him has gone someplace else.” That is the way she gathers sugar.
She hands the sugar to me in a cold manner as if we are both statues and have nothing to talk about.
I can tell she wants me to leave because rain is beginning to fall through the ceiling and get her wet. She wishes to sit near the fire, and watch sitcoms without the rain coming through the roof.
I leave.
I go to a park bench and sit down. It is a triangle of grass next to a bakery and a grocery store. There are some pigeons about. I scatter the sugar near my feet so the pigeons may eat it.
I do not want anything to do with the sugar. I want to be as far away from it as possible. There is nothing farther away than inside the bellies of nameless pigeons.
The pigeons devour it quickly.
I will throw the bag which used to hold the sugar away in a trash can once I get up from this bench.
END
Estate Sale
Jeff was not happy about it. He had to sell all the items of his past life. He wanted to alienate himself from his past life, to pretend that it had nothing to do with him but was instead the past life of some distant cousin whose life he, inexplicably, remembered as his own.
It was too bad. There were many sentimental items that Jeff wasn’t keen on parting with, but everything he owned was part of his past, so it all had to go. These items had no significance to anyone else. They would be sold for much less than the emotional value they held. He wished they were owned by some junk-store-salesman, then Jeff could buy those items, and they would be virgin sentimental items, untainted by his past life. Of course, this could not happen. Sentimental items are stamped with the stamp of eternity. They are always items of a past life.
Jeff had a Mickey Mouse wristwatch that his dad had bought at a gas station in Idaho and had given him for his sixth, seventh, and eighth birthdays combined. Jeff had a car which he had bought two years ago. It was a good car. Jeff had a ceramic jar full of his dad’s ashes. Jeff had a box of love letters he had written to his ex-wife. Jeff had a case of Pyramid beer which he could not drink, for it was the beer of his past life and must be sold. Who was going to buy a ceramic jar full of ashes of a father they had never met? He was unhappy about those beers; he would really like to have one.
He couldn’t call it The Sale of His Past Life, so he stuck up a sign reading Estate Sale in front of his house and paid a couple of kids to post flyers around the neighborhood.
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“Anything to eat for sale? I’m hungry.”
“I have a cheesecake I bought two weeks ago. It’s been in my fridge. I haven’t touched it.”
“Is it alright?”
“There’s a bit of mold on it.”
“Could I still eat it?”
“Sure, you can still eat it.”
“Good, I’m hungry.”
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“I’m looking for something for my daughter.”
“I have a plastic Mickey Mouse wristwatch.”
“Does it work?”
“No.”
“Then why would I want it?”
“My dad gave it to me for my birthday.”
“Why would that make me want it?”
“I don’t know.”
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“What’s that?”
“An urn full of my dad’s ashes.”
“Is it for sale?”
“Sure.”
“You know, I never knew my father. He left before I was born. If I buy this ceramic vessel holding your father's ashes, could I pretend the ashes belong to my own father and then take the vessel from the top of my bookshelf and talk to it when I’m feeling lonely?”
“Sure.”
“How much for it?”
“Ten dollars.”
“I only have five dollars.”
“That’s alright.”
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The estate sale lasted a week.
It took a long time to sell most of his things.
He donated the rest to Goodwill.
END
