Her Fav Sushi Place

I’m alone but ask for a table.  There’s something spiritual about the silence a lonely dinner in a quiet romantic restaraunt.  I’m not here to impress her, to be honest I’d be ashamed if she even knew what I was doing.  She loved Japanese food with a passion so infectious you couldn’t help but taste it with her.  I couldn’t get her off of my mind, which is an unfortunate cliché, I could get her off my mind.  But, I am still in love with her, so she lilts in my mind, teasing me with a laugh, striking me breathless with a single look, and causing the walls of my heart to tumble with every kiss.

I order mindlessly, I don’t even feel hungry but I haven’t eaten in the last twenty one hours so I suppose I should.  It must be the slow time for the restaraunt, because all of the waitstaff are around a table eating.  I take comfort in that image as one of them stops to serve me soup, any place that the employees eat at must be somewhat well kept.  The soup is served in a small decorative bowl with a delicate ceramic spoon, I’m naturally clumsy and my hands are shaking (from a lack of food? an oncoming crying fit?) so I take a long time with every spoonful.  Again my mind goes to her, willingly, longingly, desperately.  I think of our first kiss, I touched her hand as gently as I could, I was shaking then too and afraid of shattering the decorative ceramic moment we were sharing.  I didn’t try to move too slowly then but every second was an eternity of anticipation.  Thoughts of passion boiled in me, the self-involved poet in me began working to stay ahead of the game by coming up with flowery ways to describe what I was imagining to be an amazing kiss.  The soup touches my lips, as my memories bring her lips to mine, she is warm and satisfies like food to the starving.  My inner poet resigns to artistic frustration, for the words to describe such a kiss only exist within the most beautiful tear I’ve ever shed.  I sit and watch that tear fall silently into miso soup.

My experience with the soup has rekindled my hunger, so I am quite excited when when a sushi roll is placed in front of me.  I take out the chopsticks, being careful not to rub them together as once was my habit, another thing she taught me, that motion is insulting to the establishment you eat in.  I grab the first piece and I put it in my mouth.  This time my eager anticipation fails me, nothing excites me about this sushi.  I redecorate the other pieces with soy sauce and wasabi in an attempt to bring life back into my dinner, and her passion to my life.  I know this blandness, it was in her touch near the end.  She would touch me because it was the thing to do, not because she wanted to.  I could throw in flowers and chocolate, like soy sauce and wasabi, to try and delight her.  But it was just garnish and spice, I wasn’t really thrilling her.  Like the sushi I let slide down my throat, it doesn’t give me what I’m looking for.

I pay my bill using as few words as possible.  I slide into my car, turn it on to warm it up.  My head rolls back to stare at the brownish gray bleakness of my ceiling.  I manifest her memory, she puts her head on my shoulder, "What is wrong with me?" she says.  I don’t answer her, what I’m thinking doesn’t fit inside any word I know.  Nothing is wrong with her, life just needs to be exciting and...well... I just haven’t been.  What’s wrong with me?  I look out to the street I’m about to drive on, it’s a one way street.  What a terrifying thought, a one way street, a path I can’t change my mind on.  I turn off my car and step into the spring air, thoughts of her keep my warm despite a sudden breeze, I get back in my car and thrust on the ignition.  I slam the car into gear and fire my car toward the street.  I make a last second vear to the right, my car slams into the curb then connects soundly with the one way sign.  I leave it a mangled, curved arrow.  You make choices every day and no one is going to prevent me from making my own.