Pillow talk

They say to ignore them. I try. Draw a line, like in the sand searching for a wave to wash any evidence away. This one wasn’t skinny and she had white teeth, which I found odd. Most of them have baggy clothes and mustard teeth, somewhere between the color of American yellow and stone ground.

“Darlin’.” She called to me, smiling, all sweet, as if we were beau’s, only she doesn’t know I don’t take kindly to that sort of sugaring. I’d rather she had said point blank; level, “Look, I’m in a bind and I hate to ask. Could you spot me five dollars for the bus?” Then it could be true or it could be a lie, but I’d feel much better about my five dollars leaving my pocket if she could keep it cold, simple, like at the bank. “How can I help you today; fives, tens or twenties?”

So this morning I kept on walking on my island, pretending the same way she pretended, unable to see the shipwreck but tonight I feel her warmth as if she is in the bed with me, twisting up my covers and the cause of my sweat. Since she is close, I decide it might be right to offer her my pillow. It’s in the shape of a boomerang and doesn’t know if it is coming or going, like her, I suppose. It cradles me, the back of my head, my neck and shoulders and as I drift, allows me to forget the execrable and remember the exemplary, waking with me in reward. And I wish she would take it, but she doesn’t because she is gone. I don’t think of her as is advised, but rather look around the room one last time just before falling asleep on my boomerang with no thought other than the solid ceiling above me, the cold floor beneath me and the walls that defend me from the indefensible.