ALEKSANDAR NAKIC/GETTY IMAGES
Voices
placed by a strange softness, a
bitter sugar, THIS ISN’T THE ELEPHANT EAR I REMEMBER HOW
DARE THEY! You want to hurl it
to the ground, but you don’t know
where to find the energy from your
sapped body, so you cram it in and
swallow it all, hoping at the very
least to ride a sugar high for a few
glorious minutes.
Instead, you find yourself
clomping heavily back down the
street, shielding your eyes from the
blinding sun and sharp blue sky,
furious the weather could be so
misaligned from your heart.
JOANNA
ZELMAN
You glare at the happy family
laughing over luncvh and catch eyes
with the mother. She laughs more
and is she — is she taunting you?!
You funnel all that loneliness into
anger for an empowering 17 seconds, but she turns away because in
her fulfilled life, you have too little
worth to even be of a bother to her.
You estimate the cost of a sameday flight home — it must be a
same-day ticket, for by tomorrow
you’ll regret the purchase. You slip
into flashbacks with family and
friends: nothing extravagant, it never is the birthdays or holidays you
remember, but rather you glorify
the mundane, the irritating: your
dogs barking at the door despite
HUFFINGTON
10.13.13