Poem and Prose Scraps (That Don't Quite Fit Elsewhere)

Damp Napkins

It does seem to come out of nowhere.

Like when you're standing in front of a shelf of writing guides, an empty aisle in the bookstore that you've visited in dozens of other locations, looking at copies of things you've seen and never had interest in buying about getting published or dialogue or tips and exercises similar to what you've already got and haven't used so why should you be getting more? And all of a sudden it hits you, and you can't really read the titles anymore, can't really read anything except the sign that labels the shelf "Writing Guides" because it's in big black block letters and you already know what it says, so are you really reading it at all?

There's a sudden wave that washes over you, and you have this random urge to cry, to mourn the loss of... something.

What is something?

Perhaps it is your loss of hope, your hope that all your ambitions for having a successful writing career will come to fruition, which has been dashed by the realization that you really are doing practically nothing to achieve that, and what little you have done is meaningless in the long run.

Perhaps it is your loss of youth, something people will scoff at you for mourning, especially when they look at you and see a high school student and say, "You still have plenty of youth left, what do you mean, loss of youth?" The same people that tell you not to grow up so fast, that get angry when you're fifteen and want a cell phone, when you're twelve and want to use makeup, when you're four and want to be a "big kid", saying "you're too young for that" in an attempt to get you to value and preserve that form of youth while you still have it. Now that you value it, they want you to abandon it, and "grow up", and you've already started to do just that, and can't seem to stop, no matter how much you might want to.

Perhaps it is something else entirely.

Perhaps it is all of the above.

And you sit there, looking at those black block letters without reading them, trying to keep down whatever is coming up.

This time you succeed, blink back the tears, and just pull yourself away from that shelf of writing guides you're not going to heed that you're not going to buy and walk off to another section as if nothing was wrong at all.

And you manage to do that for a while, stilling shaking hands by holding open doors with white knuckles, brushing off those times you almost trip because you didn't pick your foot up enough to dodge the floor correctly on general clumsiness, immersing yourself in conversation and comedy and sex and exhaustion-driven sleep masked with good intentions in order to distract from and ignore and delay the inevitable. It works. It's working.

You can't get the straw out of the wrapper.

It's a plastic wrapper, not a paper one, so you can't tear it easily, especially with shaky, fumbling fingers. You need to use the counter to push it out, but does the flat or pointed end go on the counter? The bigger end, the flat end, should come out first, right, so it doesn't get stuck, but then the pointed end would get crushed against the counter.

Put the flat end on the counter and push the pointed end up and out. Obviously.

The straw's out. It's fine. No one cares that you had to struggle a bit, no one really, except you. But you can't care, you shouldn't care, and so you force yourself not to, and you don't care anymore.

Now you need to stick the straw through the plastic over the drink, and you need to do it carefully, correctly, otherwise you're going to make a mess.

You can't get the straw through the plastic.

Try again.

Try a different angle.

Try pushing harder.

Work faster, stop struggling, just do it-

Milk tea explodes over the plastic covering it, sending drops dribbling down the side of the cup and flying onto the counter, onto you, your hand, into your hair. People see.

There it is again, the urge to cry, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps from frustration, perhaps from both, but you can't. People will see.

Instead you still yourself, drag yourself to the napkin dispenser and grab an unnecessary amount, furiously dabbing and wiping at your hand and hair as you return to your cup at the counter to clean up your mess, hoping no one cares, no one is watching. 

The trash can is on the other side of the room. You're not going to make it over there, so you crumple up the damp napkins in your white-knuckled fist and take the drink in your other hand and stick the stupid straw in your mouth and hope the cold will numb it all out and make it feel better like Ryan McCartan's singing voice claims and continue dragging yourself, out the door, through the parking lot, to the car, stumbling a bit when you fail to pick your foot up enough for a step and feel the ball of your foot scrape too much against the pavement.

You make it there and keep it down. The drink goes in the cup holder, you go in the seat, and take a few deep breaths. It goes down. Your hand opens and the napkins fall harmlessly to the floor, to be thrown away later. Things are okay.

Might as well take another drink.

And then you miss with the straw, sending it scraping against your front teeth and your gums and ramming into your upper lip, spilling more milk tea.

You need the napkins again.

It stings. Hurts. It all hurts as it comes back up and washes over you, and this time there's no keeping it down.

The napkins are too damp to sop it all up.