taxis and chicken soup

I love the way you lie, I tell her. "Fuck you" she replies.  And with that I get up and leave.  As her front door shuts behind me, I button up the jet black pea coat as my breath vaporizes in front of me.  Oh well...

She stands at attention in her living room livid with rage, desperate with sorrow, and bursting with tears.  She walks into her kitchen and turns off the stove.  The meal she was cooking for me.  A slight slip of the finger, the wrong placement of her hands and she burns herself.  The pot spills over.  Her reaction just fast enough to evade the torrent of hot soup spilling onto the ground. Splashing.  "MOTHERFUCKER!" she yells.

I hear one last scream from her as the taxi peals off.  The driver asks me about my job.  Oh, this and that, I reply.  I ask him how long he's been driving.  "20 years" he tells me.  That long?  And he goes on a lengthy monologue about how the city's changed.  My eyes close behind my sunglasses and my mind drifts...

The thick broth coming away and separating from the oil.  Reminiscent of his poem.  Of Pinsky's gasoline rainbows.  She sighs exasperated.  Turns around and heads into her bathroom.  She turns on the hot water.  And then the cold.  Hot! Cool. Too hot, cold.  Until she gets the water to what she wants and puts the stopper in the drain.  She heads back into the kitchen and looks at the mess.  "Asshole" she thinks to herself...

The taxi passes the river, onto the bridge.  The driver still reciting his life story.  I just smile every once in a while. "And my friend works his butt off! Day in and day out.  And for what?  Young man, let me tell you, money ain't nothin', if you ain't got nobody to spend it on."  I've got somebody to spend it on...me.  But I get what he's trying to tell me.  But it's nothing I haven't heard before from my parents.  30...something and single.  I tell my friends it's by circumstance, not choice, but they know better...

She looks at the small pond on the floor.  Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman.  She shakes her head and gets the mop.  "Such a self-centered asshole."  Mop, mop, mop.  Drip, drip, drip.  Bucket.  Splash!  "Ok," she tells herself,  "I'm not forgiving him for this.  Not this time."  Her hands shake for some odd reason.  Her heart tremors.  "Fucking asshole.  Fuck, fuck, fucking asshole!"  She sniffles, and wipes away the last tear as her heart pounds...

He looks at me with a weird look.  That look a dog gives when he smells something he's never smelled before.  The one with the head tilt.  And my body leans to one side...no wait, not leans.  it's pushed.  And then I hear the sound of the crunch as we get t-boned by something.  And as my head crashes through the glass window I feel my face scrunching up.  My eyes close.  When I open my eyes again I feel a sharp contrast of the cold concrete against my back versus the warm blood rushing every which way.  Fuck me my body hurts.  I reach in my pocket and pull out the old Nokia.  The one with the green screen.  It still works.  I dial the last number called.  And as the world fades to black my last thoughts are haha, oh well...

With the last of the soup going into the bucket she goes and settles into the tub.  Calloused hand and all.  And she lays back and closes her eyes.  The bath salts effervescing.  And the world melts away.  The bucket, the mop, him, are all dots on a distant landscape.  Her tense muscles relax and she sinks herself deeper into the bath water.  The whole world muted as her head sinks underneath.  Nothing but the transient sounds of  tiny waves crashing against the sides of the bathtub.  The bubbles gently tickling her body.  She smiles.  Alone time.  Time to breathe.  A time where she's not defined by anything; not mother, daughter, sister, lover.  Just herself.  In a place all to herself.  And not a soul to bother her.  Not even a mouse.  And yet suddenly rushing in is his voice reciting Whitman's words

         "I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
         You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
         I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
         I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
         I am to see to it that I do not lose you."

And with that she is forced awake from her peaceful reverie, nay, jerked awake as if by some violent hand.  Her breaths heavy as she hears the ringing of her phone.  His ring tone..."No," she tells herself.  He can wait.  This is her time.  And for once, she'll make him do what SHE wants...