dinner

The apartment was empty. The big rooms, and their pale walls, deserted. A window was open, and the rainy day outside splattered in.

We couldn’t hold hands anymore. She had grown old, and no longer sought the comfort held within my palms.

It was a Sunday, and I was more concerned with dinner, than the sadness saturating her eyelids. It’s been fun, she said, buttoning the last few buttons of her coat.

I said nothing, watching her walk out the door.

After she left, I stayed in our empty apartment for weeks, cooking up frozen meals, eating them alone on the bare ground. I didn’t read, or watch TV or answer the telephone. I had lost all ability to recognize emotion, and wasn’t sure if this meant I was depressed or a bad person. She would say the later, I would keep silent.

Eventually, I had to return to work, to put furniture back into the home I’d ruined. I was the editor of a small literary magazine that published up-in-coming, non-traditional prose. Small bites of fiction, mostly, but occasionally a parade of haikus, strung together like Christmas lights on a decorated tree.

I hated my job, probably because I wasn’t very good at it. I’d never been a writer, or anything, simply a failed reader, who couldn’t find anything else to enjoy, other than submersing myself in the tokens of strangers’ lives. You should’ve been a psychoanalyst, my mother used to say.

We had tried for a long time to have children. I knew both of us were in denial about our abilities as parents, but there was no use in fighting, then. Maybe we thought children would fix our relationship, give us something to work for, something to work towards. When she couldn’t get pregnant, and I stopped caring, the love we had once felt so intensely, flickered out.

I had gained some weight, and she had lost some. I once read somewhere that it is impossible for human beings to feel sad while eating. I took this to heart, while it took to my belly. Maybe that’s why she stopped loving me. Not the babies, or the boredom, but the belly, where I had tried to fill, or ignore, all the pain.

She never liked children. She told me, when we had just started dating, that all children were sticky. Truth be told, I was never too fond of them either, but certainly not on account of their texture.

When I am the most upset, I lay on the ground, in the dark and listen to records. I have to be alone otherwise this doesn’t work. If intruded upon, I become more upset, I become angry.

I think I am always angry.

I don’t remember what it feels like to by in love. I just remember the anger, and the sorrow, and the hate.

She never came back. I always imagined she would, but she doesn’t.

I slowly fill my apartment up with furniture. A coffee table, a bookcase; glasses and plates and silverware. I make big dinners, only for myself, and promise leftovers, but always end up eating the entire spread anyway.

Does this chicken breast love me? I ask. Do the mashed potatoes, corn and bread love me more? Am I the only one contributing to this relationship?

It is impossible for human beings to feel sad while eating.

So I chew, and chew, waiting as long as I can to swallow.