Excerpt from a longer piece.

Wednesday Evenings

I visited the drive through of a grimy fast food restaurant for comfort, thinking that maybe with friends and a cheap dinner I’d figure out a way to forget about you. But all I’m left with after is red, yellow, and rivulets of regret imprinted on my body. No good fortune and false promises of happiness. Later that night, alone, my mind stays deserted, arid blue, and I remember driving with you down MLK boulevard with your hand on my thigh and still turning my head to look at the bar you worked at then in the hopes I’d see you. I didn’t realize what I had done until after we drove past it and you started singing along with the radio next to me. As the violent patter of rain on my window echoes over and over I think talking isn’t always about communication. There is so much more I want to say, so much more that I could have said, sitting across from you all those times in that small apartment you fixed yourself but I didn’t realize then that you weren’t cruel, just oblivious. I think about how I tried to tell you things with my hands, lips, with that broken cassette player inside the beat up white Volvo that stays in my memory.