Whole Again

If I go now, will it comfort you to know that I went away totally happy ?

i. My father kept texting me those words, patiently teaching me, and now I’ve learned to say I love you too.

ii. I found that I could strut it if I want . Look back at these foolish men smiling and nudging each other two tables down as I and my brother move our hands over the belly of this sweet fish. I smile at them just enough to jolt them to attention and then turn fierce, raise both of my eyebrows as I frown, enough to show them what’s on. I’m telling you strangers feasting on this façade that you’re doomed. I don’t need the likes of you to feel wanted. And then it passes and I go back to what I really want, this pleasure of sucking squid and fish tails.

iii. I wake up, check the temp (-10 deg C), plurk the laundry into the machine and make a feast for breakfast -- water crackers with pesto, multivit juice and a day-old brown roll smeared with the leftover tuna spread I found in the ref, plomp myself into the queen bed and turn giddy popping pieces of salty basily flavored cracked bread. Licking my fingers clean just as I reach the last of Marie Howe’s words -- could I bear the look on his face when he wheels around?

iv. Afterwards I clean the room shirtless and it is freedom! Prancing around, be this comfortable in my own skin which though flawed, is wondrous, sinewy. Loving the wholeness of my pasts, this new cloud of self-devotion.