You blew it. You took something you’d never had before and ground it into the sides of walk-in freezer, rammed it against the door until it screamed under you. All at once, your insides melted and your brain shorted out. The one emotion you didn’t know you were capable of feeling swelled up like a balloon in your chest and leaked out every orifice. Leaked out until it was gone and down some stranger’s throat in an impulse of weakness.
You left that freezer without him and went about your shift as if your chest didn’t ache and your eyes didn’t threaten to burst. Your hands moved through the motions of your job, his with a calmness you still envy.
You blew it. You broke yourself just as quickly as you fell in love. The man you just betrayed 200 miles away can probably sense something is wrong as if your greedy mouth accidentally flipped a switch to a lighthouse beam projecting your shame into the Ohio snow for him to see. Do you feel guilty? Does it hurt yet? Or are you in too much shock to fully comprehend the brevity of your evil stupidity?
Feel it overwhelm you and choke on it--because that’s the only thing you’re good at doing right? Choking? You’re making sandwiches, that’s cute. You’re greeting the customers, that’s rich. How quaint of you to work with that man after what you two performed moments ago, and with such lighthearted conversation floating between you two like waves lapping against the shore of your fucking lighthouse.
You know he doesn’t care how you feel, even as he watches you in your pathetic attempt to hold back tears. It’s tragic, really. You spent five months building your first love up, five months and countless minutes spent riding a dingy greyhound bus at four in the morning from the slums of Detroit to the bustle of Columbus. All the lackluster sex you endured where the only time he finished came in the form of a tired wrist and a prayer.
Hope you enjoyed these five minutes. Look at the bright side: you can hide it, or at least you can try, but you won’t because you can’t keep your slutty mouth shut, whether it be for secrets or for your coworker’s phallus. Now it’s sinking in. That’s right. Let it claw the landscape of your throat. Let it slip out of those fat, rubbery lips as you kindly repeat an old man’s order and take his cash. Let it slip out of your plastic grin when you go to act cordially with that rat with the twisted mouth and the subpar tail. Grab your phone and text your future ex. Tell him of your dramatic betrayal and beg for forgiveness you know will never come. Done and done.
