Afternoons
I pick apart the cake with my fork. It tastes great, better than most days, that wasn’t the problem I’m searching for. And just then I find it – through the dark brown burrows spills out white – baking powder, improperly mixed in. Tastes slightly bitter, spilling out slow. Like a sack torn open. Slow and quickening. I break into the dough and see some more. A collection here and a collection there. Like pests, crawling, conniving, conquering. Taking over till white trails are marked all over. And the cake’s torn open, with no conceivable way to fix it.
It’s ruined, infected, defiled, it could’ve been avoided if I mixed it for more than a minute. My appetite’s faded but I have to eat it. I switch for a spoon, and then do just that, shoving pieces into my mouth bearing the unbearable bitter. It tasted great before, but that was before the discovery, before I knew.
Perhaps if I didn’t find out at all it might’ve tasted the same. The bitterness mustve been present before I found it, but I didn’t realise it then. It’s all to do with my perception – if my brain is convinced of something then my senses will lie to keep agreement. I can’t help it, I only know this much. Not if my brain plays tricks on me.
I finish the cake and I’m sure it’s what poison tastes like.
The time reads 3:18. The sunspot is here again, the one on my bedroom floor that takes shape in summer. It’s a perfect outline of the window grills, and it’s a size that’s comfortable to lie in. So I do, and it’s so warm, a respite from the cold marble all around.
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From the floor I get a direct view of the sun, only for a few seconds at a time. There isn’t much else to look at, so I look from elsewhere. Head tilted, I look out from the rim of my glasses, and now it’s a sunset. Shapes of red and yellow and orange take form and the rim casts a shadow. As I move my eyes, the sun dips behind the dark edge. It’s a crude game, some say a mad game, but to me it’s entertainment. Like a secret film only I can watch, a play of shapes and colours and changing perspectives. The show ends at 3:26 when my eyes strain from looking out to the side for so long.
I miss you.
I wish you could lie here with me and I’d give you my glasses to watch this secret film, just the two of us on the floor, looking at the sun till our eyes hurt. I wonder if your glasses do that. Probably not, they’re black and all boring. And broken now.
I wonder what you would say if you were here. I think about it all the time and come up with answers too. Lots of answers, rolls on rolls of failed audition tapes of me as you, hypothesizing what you’d say or do. Can’t test my theses cause you’re never around. Failed experiment. Failed movie. Failed filmmaker. I wanted to get you a mug with “world’s best filmmaker” stamped on it. I don’t know if you remember that you wanted to be that. I remember wanting to get you something for your birthday. I had a plan I never did.
It scares me that I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words. Words like love or afraid or boredom or fate or interest or mistakes. I think I’m all of them. I’m always interested if you’re there. I wish you were here. If you taste some baking powder off your fingertip you get a soft burn on your tounge. The tiniest firework. I wish I could have shown you.
speed ran
