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What are you waiting for?
"My side of the bed"
That's not a phrase one utters with great frequency when you're not sleeping with someone.
And 9 times out of 10 who you're sleeping with is your lover.
Hell... 9 times out of 10 when you say "my side of the bed"
you're talking about your live in.
Exclusivity, priorities, marriage.
That kinda shit.
Very suddenly the sky is falling.
And I'm trapped in a coffin of cubicle dimensions and postit memos.
"Taken"
that's another word we don't hear in casual conversation.
These words are the plunger of my executioner's needle.
That just made it press all the faster.
Everything slowed down in that realization.
As poison reality sped through my veins and into my heart.
It could have lasted all day.
Everything got thick, like walking through mud, maybe losing a shoe or two.
I wanted to escape, go to my happy place
where the air wasn't lead, and my insides weren't falling into my toes,
but the only destinations on my list had her with me.
My next recollection is washing sick and grime out of my mouth.
Blasting a knuckle duster off, and speeding back home.
Maybe not all in that order.
My shirt unbuttoned, my pants around my thighs and that lingering electricity of a forced frustrated orgasm.
It only helped to sink me back from panic and into a miserable solid.
The drive back was another missing section.
So was lunch. So was a day's worth of caseloads and processing.
All I knew was someone was speaking.
And taking my candy.
Wait... that one was literal.
"Hey- she likes you."
said an older smoked out leathery hispanic hag.
A caramel hand caught in my tin, digging out two drops and crunching them.
They're meant to be savored.
But I guess everyone has rules on hard candy.
That's fine.
Everything's fine when she's here.
...
this is real isn't it?
She's here, again, and she's smiling, that smile I haven't seen in a week.
The one that makes me worship the buttons down her blouse and chew threw the one over her panties.
We're still undecided on what kind she wears.
For once, I could give a fuck less.
"Shut up Ana!"
"Did you hear us as we came in? We were speaking Spanish- do you speak Spanish?" said the cackling old hag.
"Un pequito" I say still more than a little entranced by the color of her skin.
"Did you hear us? I asked her if she liked you- I said 'te gusta?'" she points a long witchy finger at me, turns to pantamime that she's now someone else- smiles coyly and says "me gusta".
I'm pretty sure I had in fact heard just that.
But it could have been my hope crazed brain gasping for a reason to continue running.
Hell... this might not be happening at all.
"Shut up Ana!" and she buzzes and shoos at the old witch.
She giggles
"see she wants some quality time, she does like you!"
Lazers may have come out of her eyes when Ana samba'd off.
I think that might be part of the appeal.
White women waltze off.
Latinas samba, in this crazed but sensical oomf of liquid sex and confidence.
I've never seen a lurch or a stomp not a single step without a flow from her.
"hey-" she stops to laugh at the absurd situation she's in.
I smile too, its that one where I'm pained, but glad to see you.
"hey, what's up with that email you sent me?"
Oh dear...
What did my panicked wit produce this time?
What lifeline did I beg her for
Paris?
Morocco?
Her place?
I remember now.
"I asked you to smile."
It was barely over a whisper.
"Yeah, don't worry about it I'm bi-polar"
to this I scoffed.
"Everyone's bipolar" half the cases I run have someone claiming it as a disability, hell it was an inneroffice joke at this point.
Which meant it was something else.
And the face that followed begged me to pry, but I pretended not to see it.
"You've just been so gloomy lately, you should cheer up."
Flat. Like a rehearsed plea to the jury after six nights in a yellow cell.
Like a request for water, or to see a tree after years of desert.
I tried not to be so blunt about it,
I tried to ask her what her boyfriend would think about what Ana had said,
something cute and witty to keep this feeling from falling into both of us
just waiting for the vase to connect
and the pieces of me to scatter.
"I'll try"
But that moment had already come.
Where no sensible, adjusted person wouldn't notice.
And she smiled the rest of the day.
