Chapter 1: Toast
Journey knew it would be the last time he ever saw her when he woke up that morning, the sunlight brushing her face with the grace of a dancer. He knew and yet he hadn’t admitted it to himself when he leaned over and kissed her softly on the forehead, “Good morning my angel.” He knew, but not like one knows the answers on a test. It was more like something one intuits; like the implied communication when lovers touch. Over coffee and toast, his mind reconciled the fact that this childish fantasy was concluding, and that there was nothing he could do about it. It relieved him in a way. Journey wasn’t the type to express his thoughts aloud, not even to himself; instead he preferred to not contemplate them until they died of old age and loneliness. The coffee was tart that morning, but it would have to do. By the end of it all, the day tasted bitter sweet in his mouth, and smelled of nostalgia and nausea. As he left the house, he noticed that his toast had tasted… flat, and later, he would kick himself for not recognizing it as a sign.
When he returned that night to find shadows dancing on the wall like an ancient ritual, he didn’t even bother to feel hurt. He always knew that she wasn’t his by the way that she never seemed to finish his sentences. She would look at him like someone who hadn’t found her soul mate sometimes, and they would laugh away the anxiety. In all honesty, it hurt him. He expressed feelings he was incapable of vocalizing with distance, and he could tell she did the same by the way her finger tips would get cold to the touch, even though she insisted on holding him. She belonged to someone else, and he wished she were the past.
When his eyes could finally meet hers again, he saw that they were unapologetic. They spoke matter-of-factly saying, “Well, what now gummy bear?” and at the time he had no answer. There was no vocabulary in his lexicon capable of describing the feelings that rose. To be clear, he wasn’t sure that it was even an emotion that he felt, so when his hand found the trigger and squeezed, it couldn’t necessarily even be considered an act of passion; an act of rote perhaps. A pre canned response describing an interpretation of how a situation should be handled. He had merely stumbled into it by way of lack of character.
Journey knew this was the last time he would ever see her again, and for that he had taken his time that morning. He whispered to her slower than he had ever spoken to her before with words only she could hear. He talked to her in a language that made sense to both of them as if to make up for years of speaking in dialects alien to one another. In the end, he was glad that he had remembered to kiss her on the forehead that morning and to take the time to notice that her eyes were green. As he lay there, floating in a sea that felt like it might go on forever, he could see those same eyes starring back at him, and all he could think was if he had only had one more day to change things, maybe the toast wouldn’t have gone flat that morning.
Click here for part 2
This is part 1 of a six part series. I consider this to be a continuation of my experimentation with mixing poetry and prose. This is far more on the prose side, but I tried to convey a lot of information in a short space by way of some sentences with dense imagery. If you get a chance, leave a comment and let me know if you think it works. Truth be told, this entire endeavor was inspired by a game called Braid, which I think is absolutely brilliant. Each level is preceded by a set of story books which tell the story of a character named Tim. My interpretation of the story is that it uses game references as an analogy for his life. It speaks of his time with "the princess," and how he's trying to find her, but I figure that that's more of just a metaphor. Whatever the case may be, I think it's a really cool presentation for the game, and the story deals with themes of time, and mistakes, and growth. So I guess that inspiration carried over into what I was trying to do with this piece. Anyway hope you enjoyed.
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