I ventured out after work yesterday with visions of a shiny new belt across my waist.
Wandering around Broadway
soho
where ever
My illness growing with every step, my throat gradually eating itself as if I were holding some sort of streptococcus family reunion.
And at some point, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted him. There was no double-take. No moment of computation. I knew with one glance that it was him.
Sickly white skin stretched loosely over his bird-like face. Deeply pitted eyes, vacant and deliberate.
He was moving though the crowd, hunched and furry, loosely clutching a cup of coffee. How very "New York".
Some small sense of panic set upon me and I quickened my pace, trying to escape without the burden of eye contact. A million thoughts filled my head and I wanted nothing more then to avoid the liars game of "Oh, How are you?".
Nearly four blocks later, my brain was still a speedway of contemplation. My face still red from the fresh slap of all the frustration and anger I've repressed over the past year and a half. Even the subway ride home assembled into a montage of flashbacks and could-have-beens.
All these emotions flooded back in a tsunami of crude oil sludge, drowning the "sensible me" somewhere between the sharks and the shore. Somehow I always play it nice, I'm always the good guy. I remind myself that I don't hate him. I don't even hate what he represents. She was the shark, he is just water. Sometimes it's just difficult to face your replacement.
