Word Count: 365
She balled up the day like a lunch bag after she’d eaten. It hung on her tongue with the bitter tang of meat gone bad. She was still hungry, the hollow of her stomach grumbling and sore, even as she processed the pain.
The loss of a lover is always the worst at the onset, before the actual leaving has been made, the severing of a learned normality of routine that leaves you naked and lost in the middle of Twelfth Street and Vine. Human traffic flows by, each light blinking a hint of direction. If you have faith you can dodge the oncoming cars.
Sharon was near-sighted and cautious. While people streamed around and near-missed her, she crumpled into herself with each pass. She felt the wind from each passerby ruffling her hair, making her itchy and fearful. Even the smiles seemed like frightening jack-o-lantern grins. When she saw an opening in the crowd, she floated through with a grimness enhanced with a sense of destiny. There was no will left to fight, no desire to protect.
Obviously the inevitable head-on crash was a five-star event. Sharon lay sprawled on the sidewalk, eggs cracked and spreading, apples bouncing, hamburger splattered in a roadkill pose of its own.
He helped her up first, holding onto her hand firmly since she offered no real strength of her own. Together they bobbed in a widening circle, collecting food that was bruised and bloodied and colored the walk. He claimed full responsibility and apologized, something she didn’t quite trust.
He called her a few days later. Without the good sense to refuse, she met him for an after-work dinner, a small place she knew well. A place she felt safe in because she had saved it as a hideaway from her last lover, knowing she’d lose it to him if she didn’t.
Even as Sharon relented, opened herself to the charm and generous nature of this friendship, this about to become a relationship, this man, she prepared herself for the taste of eventual loss. For that time when it ends. When the night rots the bold luscious tastes of the day.
