Memories of sandwiches and such... |
Tomato Sandwich I saw her looking, through a smoke glazed window, quietly watching me with closed, secret thoughts rimpling her face. The air in there was swirling with a haunting gust of blue, but she was eased by it. I wanted her to meet the daylight, to reacquaint herself with the freedom of a summer morning as it haemorrhaged with greens and yellows, buzzing with the wakefulness of yawning fruit. Come out, come out! I pleaded with my heart, but if she heard this, she made no change. She stayed with her window, more attached to it than to me. I was unloved in that one tiny moment; blades of grass sliced through my bare, July-stained feet and my skin overripened under the dazzling ream of the sun. She did not study the grasshopper as it bathed in the shade on a rock quilted with lichen. She did not fish me out when I slipped into pea green water, as it teemed with porridge-thick algae. She did not see me fall from a bike as I tried to jump, while cutting through freckled gravel and dust clouds. She did not share penny candy from a brown paper bag, dangling her legs from the wooden dock as the lake waves brought the music of water life against the bottom of rocking boats. By midday, I was hoping for both for lunch and for a gentle split in nature, and for a second, there was triumph. She was not at her window. I sunk into a lawn chair, smelling of dirt and sugar, both crusted under my nails and smirching my skin, while she cracked a door, feeling for a step. She held a plate, ringed like Saturn, with browns and oranges whispering its age. On it, was a sandwich: toasted bread, with a flash of fresh red, sticking a tongue out from the middle. I lifted the top inspecting the sum of it, and saw a tomato wheel, the spokes studded with dwarfish diamonds of iodized salt, swept over with a ridged blanket of mayonnaise. I looked to her with a smile, while she wordlessly smoothed my hair. |