The dishwasher is reaching its final stage, creaking and making other little noises as the heat dries up the dishes. I smell something strange, and hope that nothing is melting inside that black box I am forbidden to open until the noises end.
So I am sitting here on a computer chair that has a widening tear on it, and around me are books of the most unrelated topics. A Spanish review book between my laptop and a Japanese cooking book, and that Japanese cooking book is supporting the negligible weight of a Hindi dictionary for beginners, which in turn is supporting an even lighter object that we all have: the cell phone. Those inhabitants are on my right while on my left is an Econometrics book that I have never opened and does not belong to me, but fate has it that on top of its cover rests the book I am reading now, a novel that became a Man Booker Prize finalist some time ago, according to its cover.
All around me are other items of insignificance, at least by themselves. But they together paint a dreary picture, which I captured in a photograph, of where I am now. I am alone. I am trying to read but whatever I read, whatever sentence, like the lyrics of the songs I listen to and the lines of actors in the movies I've been watching, they all sharpen this blade called loneliness even more and the slow piercing of my nerves, my memories, my dashed hopes never manages to numb my heart. I can almost count the seconds and I don't know where those seconds lead me. I thought they would take me to the next station in life when the person I miss so much returns. But then, that's a station I don't own. She marked that station, she decided on that station, while I am just riding a bus I didn't choose.
And if I decide to just walk away from the bus station and into my own car? What if I just take the keys, turn on the ignition, and drive somewhere instead? Where would I go? The road? There is no road. Around me are books and other random articles. Inside my head is a vodka bottle of only empty loneliness and expired laughters. So happiness isn't in a bottle. I don't mean the bottle that has the cheap joy called water of life, but the bottle with a message from some foreign and unexpected soul also seeking mine. No, such bottle doesn't exist, and if such fantom comes to my shore, it only spells trouble.
There is no car whose keys I hold and feel there's nowhere to go. There is no bottle. There is no music or movie or book to give me a soft landing on an ocean of tears. I should just accept that being thrown off so high up from the helicopter that I loved into the blue tragedy at such high speed would mean only that I be torn into pieces by the surface tension that wraps around my thirty-four-year old body. And only as I pick up the pieces and break all the rules about how to put them back together can I ever hope to enjoy the next helicopter ride, or some other ride so lofty that made me think it would be the rest of my life.
So crash! Everything into pieces.
And the tears of the ocean glues one piece at a time, with no rules to remember, no rules to make.
And while that happens the dishwasher still is clicking, though surely not indefinitely. And I am surrounded by inspirations and distractions about the work of piecing myself together. And all the while, my broken heart still yearns for her, not simply to return, but interfere with the this reconstitution step and simply appear with a bottle wherein a message says my destiny is not inside me but in that station she has named, and however temporary is the happiness I will find (or not even find) there, I so yearn for this shortcut to that station instead of piecing my billions of cells back together, each its own rules, collectively one destiny yet to be revealed.
