Minimalist Gossip Magazine Cover (49).pdf (13) - Flipbook - Page 38
different from the one I live now. I’m not brave enough to make small adjustments. I could
speak to him one day, the restaurant boy. I’m prepared to hate him for what he has done,
what I have imagined him to do. Somebody told me his wife died, friend I still talk to, it was
her restaurant, he took over after. He assumed an entirely different life, one owned by
somebody once living. He became something else, outside of himself, opened up an empty
space and made it his dominion.
There’s no way home that doesn’t take me here. Site of fear - land of fear - a path to fear.
It’s better if I close my eyes, I might bump into a wall or post-box, a guidance in darkness –
if you wanted to call it something. Sooner or later this isn’t going to be a thing. Carry it while
it lasts.
Someone is over there, on the floor. Suitcase, apparently. She is safe. I hear whistling from
a different direction. A familiar tune turned inside out, deformed. She is being lured. She is
going to die. I die alongside her. Before we die, I walk towards her. I hope for her sake that I
am not the spectre of death.
Hi, I say, do you need any help?
The whistling stops.
I’m waiting for somebody, she says.
Can I wait with you? I say.
She might say no. Before she says anything, I collapse myself and sit beside her. I offer her
something out of my pocket, I am yet to check what I actually have in my pocket, whether I
have anything of use to somebody who appears lost, somebody sitting on the corner of a
tucked away street, opposite a butcher’s shop which will have a fresh delivery of
slaughtered carcasses in no time. I find three sweets. Two greens and a purple. I hold out
my tri-coloured palm.
Want one? I say.
She takes one of the green ones, I eat a green one too.
Everyone thinks the green flavour is apple, the girl says, but it’s actually green grape; not
many people know that.
They should really put that on the wrapper, I say, or perhaps that would burn too many
illusions for one company to manage.
It is actually on the wrapper if you look close enough, she says. Small writing, underneath
the ingredients list. I had a pack the other day, the tiny text caught my eye.
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