Fried Chicken and Coffee

1–

If you were sit­ting here with me and I closed my eyes and asked you what color they are, you wouldn't know. You don't see me. The other boy who loves me, I don't love him. I don't love him back at all, because I'm stuck lov­ing you, but he looks at me like I'm made of hap­pi­ness and choco­late milk. He looks at me like I'm a dream he never wants to stop hav­ing. Every time I see him he asks me, “Sally, when you take off them fake eyelashes?”

I don't wear fake eye­lashes. He says when I look down, it's like cater­pil­lars are sleep­ing on my cheek­bones. He says he wants to take care of me and the babies he wants to have with me. He never says you're no good, but no one has to say that. They all think it. Know it.

 You made me go to that hor­ri­ble doc­tor when I got preg­nant with your baby. You walked me there, smok­ing and silent. You paid the doc­tor, but when I came out of his office, you were gone. I walked home alone. You came home drunk long after mid­night and tried to joke about it. I laughed a fake laugh just so you would smile.

 The other boy, he just smiles. I don't have to try to make him smile. I want to love him, but I can't stop lov­ing you, no mat­ter what you do.

One thing you haven't done in a good long while is show up here at home. You haven't even called. I watch the phone like it's a small child just about to wake up. It lays there, silent and peace­ful in its cra­dle. I check to make sure it's attached to the wall as often as a new mama checks to make sure her baby is breath­ing. My old friend Mona dropped by the other night to see if I was okay. She was wor­ried because I have been miss­ing church. She heard I got fired from my job sell­ing tick­ets at the movie the­ater. I didn't get fired so much as I just stopped show­ing up after you left. I asked her to go home and call me so I could make sure the ringer isn't bro­ken, that the line is up and run­ning. When she called, I answered and hung up as fast as I could. She hasn't been back around. I can't find it in me to care. I am still scared that you tried to call and got a busy sig­nal at that very moment in time and didn't bother call­ing back.

2 -

 We live just over the right side of the tracks. I still say we live here, even though you are gone. The trains all but run through our side yard. The ones that don't slow down on their way past never catch my notice. It's the ones that stop that wake me from my mourn­ing and inter­fere with my reverie. If I'm sleep­ing, I wake up. If I'm doing any­thing else, I stop. I can see the plat­form from the bath­room win­dow. I run to look at the pas­sen­gers get off the train. I hold my breath as long as I can, imag­in­ing that if I can hold it till the last per­son steps down that the last per­son will be you. I make bar­gains with God. “If I can count to 100 before the tenth pas­sen­ger is greeted by some­one, he'll be on this train.”

It never works.

3 -

Our radio broke. I can't afford a new one. Now it's just silence in the night, or the sound of trains speed­ing by. I went to see that other boy last night. I cried to him. He said he'd buy me a new radio, but I don't want a new one. I want the old one, the one you used to tune and adjust. We lis­tened to shows together in the morn­ings some­times. We lis­tened to music when we were in bed together mak­ing love, sweat­ing late into the mid­west­ern sum­mer morn­ings. We caught the news before I went to work, while I made cof­fee and you smoked off your musician's rough late nights. I took it black, you took it with milk. Nei­ther of used sugar. Every­thing tasted sweet enough to us then.

4 -

I've taken up smok­ing and quit eat­ing. Cof­fee and cig­a­rettes – that's all I can stom­ach. I'm always in a dirty slip and rolled down stock­ings and a head scarf. My hair's always dirty and the sheets are always dirty. The cat's water bowl is usu­ally empty and the sink is full of cof­fee cups. The only clean things are the dust­pan and clean­ing rags because I can't be both­ered to dirty them. I some­times do my makeup so that I look pretty for my mis­ery. I wear the Shal­i­mar you gave me only because of the mem­o­ries its scent car­ries to my mind, and to cover the odor of my body's des­per­a­tion. Our house is dirty all the time, baby. I keep mean­ing to clean it up for when you come home but when I stand up to sweep or wipe the kitchen table, I for­get what it was I set out to do, and go to look out the bath­room win­dow or shake the phone, or cry. I meet with the other boy now and then. I only do it to steal his cig­a­rettes when he's not look­ing. I let him come over with a bot­tle of gin, and I let him tell me I have eye­lashes thicker than the for­est in June, but I don't love him. I love you, and I look at the phone and lis­ten for trains the whole time he's over. One day I know that just like you, he'll leave and never come back, but I don't care. He puts no but­ter­flies in my stom­ach. I could never wait for his train the way I wait for yours.

Dena Rash Guz­man is a Las Vegas born poet, visual artist and writer of short fic­tion who now lives on the fam­ily farm in north­west­ern Ore­gon. Pub­lished in var­i­ous jour­nals and antholo­gies on paper and on the inter­net, her first col­lec­tion of short sto­ries will be pub­lished in 2012 by HAL Pub­lish­ing, a Shanghai-based inde­pen­dent Eng­lish lan­guage press. Dena is the edi­tor of the arts and lit­er­a­ture jour­nal Unshod Quills. (www​.unshodquills​.com)