She flipped the page and stared emptily at the lined words like it was a blank slate. Her mind was somewhere else- somewhere very far away.
The phone bleeped and vibrated in a tiny half circle, awakening her from her day dream. The book fell into her lap, and she rolled her head around in a circle as a sigh departed from her lips. Reluctantly, she flipped the phone open. A new text message.
She wasn't in the mood to read it. Still hung-over from the night before (which was really just a few hours ago), she blinked the sleep out of her eyes and shifted in her chair. She hit "Ignore" and closed the lid down.
Reaching into her purse, she fished for a loose American Spirit cigarette that she knew was lost somewhere in the mess of chapstick, tampons, wads of paper with scrambled brainstorms of poems, and hand sanitizer. Lighting it, she took a deep, long drag, and let the smoke sit in the back of her throat as she stared in the rearview mirror at herself. Her eyeliner had smudged in the creases of her eyes and her eyebrows were gaggly and unplucked. She exhaled and the smoke ricocheted off the front window and up and out through the moonroof. Letting out a small cough, she bit at the bed of her pinky fingernail as a car whiffed past her on the highway. The head lights blinded her, so she slid down her seat and put her head down on the arm rest.
It was six in the morning, and she was lost, parked somewhere on the side along the Coastal Highway. Even worse, she had started drinking at ten the night before...now it was still six in the morning, and she could feel the tequila wreaking havoc on her liver. It had been a tough week. She was fired from her job, and her relationship with Jason was hanging by a mere thread.
Instead of dealing with her situation responsibly, she decided to drown her sorrows in brown bottles of booze and slick wine coolers. She was sort of regretting it now, but the damage was already done. Anything to keep her mind off of reality. Plus, it helped make the time go by faster.
Her cell phone bleeped again. She took another drag and let the cigarette hang in her mouth as she read the two unread text messages in the inbox.
"It's time we moved on...," but that was all she needed to read. Throwing her cell phone to the ground, which was also littered with Cheetos and stale french fries, tears began to well up in her golden flecked, wide set eyes. He used to call her his Golden Girl.
She began to remember the times they would walk on the train tracks, staring death in the eyes and challenging it to a duel.
She remembered white waved beaches, and the golden light shining from the lighthouses on the shore.
She remembered the seafoam green umbrella they sat underneath as they ate finger sandwiches and drank cheap red wine.
She remembered the cold bitter snow as he stood at the bottom of the slope in his California-boy shorts, daring her to make the run without stopping.
She remembered every little hair on his chin, and how she loved the feeling of his scruff if he hadn't shaved for a few days.
She remembered every wrinkle in his nose, and how he only got them when their neighbor Old Lady Cossyack would have them over for tea, and tell them the same story every time: she was kidnapped by a coalition of Gypsies, where she was taught the art of deception, the tact of robbery, and the promiscuity of dance.
She remembered every line in his palm (he had a destiny for longevity).
She remembered every steel colored fleck in his eye; she called him her Iron Man.
She remembered every stitch of the quilt on his twin sized bed; that same bed where they lay so close to each other with their legs tangled together, getting high off the air that they shared.
The sound of another car whirring past her snapped her out of her pitiful chain of reminiscence, and she shook her head almost to awaken herself out of her own nightmare. The sound of static from the radio was the only thing embracing her now, as it's sound waves made it's way from the stereo speakers and up through her forearms, squirming all the way around the nape of her neck and settling on her earlobes.
She didn't know how to respond to his text message, but rather, had a craving for another shot of tequila. Instead, through the foggy vision being stifled by tears, she looked at her nub of a cigarette.
She sort of laughed and couldn't help but think that the stupid cancer stick was almost a metaphor for her own relationship. What was once a fire- so hot and soothing- was now ticking down, oxidizing and being wasted away to a small nub of ash and burnt paper. She took one last drag and snubbed it out, and didn't even bother to throw it in the ashtray.
Reclining her chair, she laid back and kicked off her Keds, which weren't even tied. She pulled down her chiffon slip dress and lifted her legs up onto the dashboard. She rolled down the windows, and she could hear the gulls of the sea birds cooing high up in the air above her. The salt of the sea poured into the car, and the memories that it brought became sharp and painful.
She got up and out of her car and walked towards the tide, which was slowly going down. The moon was still in the air; a little sliver of faint grey. The sun was now rising on the horizon, like a halved cantaloupe floating on the surface of the sea. The sand was cold on her toes, but everything felt numb to her.
They were two totally different beings- like the moon and the sun- which, were coincidentally both out this early morning. But, like the moon and the sun, both must orbit in their own independent ways. They can exist in the same galaxy and in the same orbit, and in the same universe, but they have their own independent dances that they must perform. And no matter how hard the separation, it was a poetic and beautiful one. One that even nature was working with.
