101 Words

‘Twas her heritage that attracted me to her. She were like me. The ‘pure-bloods’ who thought they was superior called us half-breeds, but we didn’t let ‘em bother us.

Or maybe it was her coat. ‘Twas real nice. Silky but warm lookin’. A deep chocolate shade that matched her eyes. She looked classy, like she belonged in a wealthy family, not on the run kickin’ with me in the hood.

I nudged the gift I’d gotten for her towards her. I thought she’d be pleased.

“You crazy, Gus?” she barked. “That crap is poison! Chocolate’s for humans, not dogs, you dummy!”

It was one of those focus apps. Something about planting a tree and getting things done.

Being idle doesn’t sit well with workaholics.

The app told me to pick a tree and set a time limit. The challenge was to not close it, to focus on your work for the duration you set.

So I set one for thirty minutes and tried to get some studying done. I felt myself beginning to focus exactly when my Mum called.

Obviously, I had to answer the phone.

Almost immediately, a notification popped up.

The killer of your tree: Phone.

Strangely, I felt wistful.

The bartenders worry about me, but they always make our drinks anyway. Gin for me, whiskey for you. Yours waits in front of your empty stool.

If she were here, she’d be yelling about something. They laugh when they indulge me.

We don’t talk about that night.

My last sight of you, bundled in your coat, slamming the bar door. How I didn’t follow you. How I wonder whether you saw the bus coming.

If I sit still, I sometimes smell your perfume. Tendrils of frozen air graze my neck.

At the end of the night, your glass is always empty.

Afterward, you rest your palm on my cheek, in the space between my strawberry birthmark and chin, in the space between your distant wife and my short-tempered husband.

“I won’t leave her,” you say. “My kids…”

“We can’t keep doing this,” I say, throwing off the threadbare cotton sheet.

But we do.

Not all poisons come from toxins. Even vitamins can be poisonous. Or water. That which sustains also destroys, in high enough doses.

So we run away into the gaps, between weekday teleconferences and Sunday’s banana waffles, between sign-ins at day care and the quiet thrum of our paper-doll lives.

“I never loved him,” Mama told me as we headed to the pawn shop in the part of town Daddy told us not to go to.

“Not even on your wedding day?”

“Nope.”

She made me swear not to tell Daddy she was selling her diamond wedding ring. “I’ll just pretend it went down the shower drain.”

I was quiet. I didn’t like to keep secrets, but it felt good when Mama trusted me.

After we left the pawn shop, Mama paid the light bill. With the remaining money, we got ice cream, just us two, just how she liked it.

He already knows it, but this battle will not be mine.

It begins, as it always does, with the eyes. A momentary flicker downwards as I break first contact.

Barely registered but a signal nonetheless.

I slip on beloved red boxing gloves, moulded to me like a first love. I lift both hands to my face as if in prayer. The sweat and blood of younger days fills my nostrils. The cooling touch of worn leather caresses my cheeks. I am ageless. The gears of time grind down.

The electronic buzzer beckons us to arms.

The laying on of hands begins.