bones
Last night, at dinner, I ordered a quarter of a chicken. You and me, we sat in that awful beige booth made for two and though we gabbed on, I could not help myself but be distracted from the people around. Middle aged married couples sitting down for ribs, eating in silence, shifting uncomfortably at our raucous laughter. Parents with their pre-teen daughters, taking a break from their shopping of downtown. Pyjama pants tucked into their Uggs, birdlike limbs crossed in on themselves, their faux-jaded looks are betrayed by the nervous, quick darting of their eyes . Bored-looking hipsters with lenseless glasses, tiny vests and bleach-splotched hair are hunkering down for the comfort of a make-shift homecooked meal in this relentlessly cold and urban city. There's a teenaged boy with his mother and brother, trying desperately to look older, he's stolen a Parasuco cardboard sign and refuses to take off his sunglasses despite being inside, away from the setting evening sun.
Laura laughed and teased about how much I picked my bones clean. I didn't notice until we were finished, that I had left them neatly piled on the side of my plate; scraped bare. "Carcass-picker!" Where Laura is repulsed by eating meat off of the bone, I grew up relishing it. One night, when I was young, my mother made a goat stew. After I ate my dinner, I took three chunks of bone to the bathroom and rinsed them clean in the sink. I stole them up to my room and left them in a drawer to dry. I kept them for a few years, making it a sort of curious ritual. I remember fitting them together; marvelling at their flawless melding at the seams, making note of the rough hack mark of the butcher's knife.
My shin is pressed against her friend's back, and we all can't help the closeness because it's a tiny bed in a dorm-style room with little else. There is the four of us, a little buzzed with warm, cheap beer and feeling the stupor of the smoke. The warmth of his back is burning into my shin, into my bones and I cannot help but be reminded of what it is like to be twisted together in a warm bed, in an seemingly endless embrace of soft shadows and sweating summer. But I feel nothing for him, and I shift and twist my leg away, closer to myself. This memory, the sensation is isolated, it's tucked away in my drawer where it waits patiently for me to run my fingers against its creamy smooth sides and attempts to piece it back together.
We came home with my head foggy and I couldn't help the giggles from bursting out nor the dumb smile splitting across my face. I dragged my knuckles sharply against the walls, felt the skin drawn taut against the bones of my hand like a drum and left them ragged and bleeding. I've fallen asleep on the couch and she is helping me into my bed, tucking me in like a child and I sleep immediately deep and dreamless.
I am rising with the sun that breaks though mercilessly through our living room windows, it is ripe and casts ribbons of gold-hinted rose against the walls, across the unblinking eyes of the cats with slivers of pupils and into my own. The apartment stinks perpetually of ammonia-tinged feline refuse and there is that damp, cavernous odor from the dim kitchen. The city is awake and screams with its cries of bus brakes hissing and car engines roaring, somewhere, above or below, there is a puppy pleading with sad cries over and over again. I am awake and bleeding and my mouth is bone dry.