/ Predictions

I think if I could have one skill it would be walking on stilts, but I would settle for writing the perfect letter, because either way I could stand high above the crowd as you wondered how here on earth I ever noticed your thousands of tiny abilities, like how you don’t like what you have until someone else tells you how wonderful it is, like how your smile always reminds me of lemonade dripping down my chin, like your force field that prevents anyone from arguing with you, even when you haven’t the slightest clue what you are saying.

You asked him if he ever sees his ex in town, and he smiled and confessed and somewhere in that back story you imagine the two of them face to face over opposite ends of some check-out aisle, and she asks, ‘Are you not talking to me anymore?’ and he says, ‘You’re only saying that because I never talk to you anymore but 10 years from now, I might say 'hi' and there goes your entire argument, so ha! years of work down the drain.’

And since she works at the garden store, she can’t spit in his purchase because it wouldn’t make no difference, and she briefly considers taking on a waitress job at that restaurant where he always takes the bride he left her for, but instead she just takes a few heads off the bouquet, even though they are perennials and she knows they’ll re-grow. He only bought me annuals! How could I have not known the significance? Asters and begonias and once, a foxglove, which lasts two years. Fucker.

She says, ‘Have a nice day and would you like any help out to your car and how dare you move on and not have any noticeable scars,’ and laughs. And he laughs, too, but sorrowfully, like you when we go through old photo albums on those evenings when some drunk driver takes out a power line and we are our only source of warmth before the fire has a chance to take over.

‘Do you remember this?’ she asks, pointing to a picture. ‘God, so many memories.’

And I look and think yes, so many. But only a few come to mind, and then I am forced to relegate another adored saying to the bargain bin, because if there are 100,000 words in a novel and 20,000 in a short story, then my god, a picture doesn’t really tell you as much as popular wisdom would have you believe.

‘Um, I remember it was really, hmm, warm that day,’ pointing at the picture where we are in the full light of the sun and are clearly sweating and there are cacti in the background. Ugh. It is like my head is a pinata full of poetry, I think. The worst part is being strung up by my toes and dodging the blindfolded children who seem so much bigger than blindfolded children used to be back in my day.

‘You know,’ I say sipping the last of my drink, ‘The way I hear it, begonias are sometimes perennial. You just gotta protect them from that first frost.’

Fortunately, they cannot hear me from way up here.