Carrie

[How the fuck do you express a tree?!] "Listen to the laughter!" I tell myself, but of course the thought drowns out both intention and sound. I think of you instead. Then I stop thinking altogether and compulsively eat raisins.

Just as a paranoid notion quivers before my mind--something about the likelihood of death by raisin engorgement--a blue pasty drink of some sort manifests itself before me in the guise of 'savior', and on the pretense of having been set there as though by a waiter. Obviously this could not be possible, given the fleeting wraith-like quality that is requisite for the elusive wait-creatures who only seem to share this 2pm diner with me as they forever flutter about, as though searching for a cigarette.

God, I need a cigarette. And when are you coming back? I wonder. So then I wonder if you wonder the same thing sometimes.

I can feel the raisins tug on my wandering attention and I glance at them guiltily, sitting there to the left of the damn chalk-violet drink which I have begun to suspect is the smoothie I ordered hours and hours ago. Finally, with what I hope to be a grandiose and symbol-ridden movement colored by glorious victory or some such awful thing, I pick up the fucking murderous container of former fruit and shove it into the black messenger bag at my feet. But then I watch a woman walk by dressed all in purple garb from crazy top hat to plastic shoes, and I have to take the poor raisins back out one last time, needing a little comfort in this godforsaken town/city.

When you left I cried for thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds. A minute for every year since puberty; each minute signifying the countlessly counted few hairs skipped casually across the back of your knuckles. You're worth the mysteriously absent floor in every hundred-some level building in San Francisco, my love! My tears, then, almost match the hour, now--middle of the hellish afternoon--and I find myself wishing there was some meaning to this. Go figure...it turns out that I cannot imagine you without me. And I don't take this to be a good sign in the slightest.