cursed meal

it’s true someone can die for the most ridiculous reasons. i wonder why it hardens like that, like why skin is thicker and paler after it’s been ripped apart once. she had come from the lifeguard training where they taught them such things as what to do if a person’s intestines or other organs have spilled out of them. you’re not supposed to like cram them back in. you’re supposed to leave them and there was something about cellophane. i still think about him like he is this prize to have been won, who i had temporarily won and then lost like a white elephant gift. i wasn’t sure i’d earned the sandwich she bought me, what she wanted from me, other than of course friendship. i hope one day to feel nothing. it’s one of those loud-windy days, when the wind gathers all around my head like the collar of one of those coats. some people wanted to go eat and i didn’t want to and it seemed like no one else wanted to because i didn’t want to. i was annoyed by this and also invigorated by the sense of power. i did very little, but not in a despairing way, not this time. i don’t know why my heart aches in his direction particularly. i took the gold foil-wrapped rabbit she’d sent, smashed its head to shards on the cutting board, added them to the popcorn. i felt irritable, cold, i was carrying an almond croissant in a bag, i wasn’t yet hungry for the croissant but i was very protective of it, already planning my whole day around it. we found detritus along a little beach, lots of completely transparent dead jellyfish of different sizes, and then several types of plastic bag, a dilapidated rose, other things. it was like a cursed meal that made me relentlessly hungry. i had to push the button to summon someone to unlock the particular walls that held the items i desired. this Airbnb is really nice, it’s got crazy amenities, like a steam iron, a lint roller, a toaster, some leftover bread and butter, an apple and two lemons in the fridge. people’s conception of a ‘book tour’ seems so inflated. they seem to think it is something that lasts forever, for the rest of one’s life. he has this enthusiasm for watching the sunset that seems a bit performative. i was glad when the accursed sun was gone, and we could go home. i realized that sometimes my mind wants to be irritated, and seeks out stimuli with which to scratch that itch. i finally got to the part of steven king’s ‘on writing’ where he’s talking about writing. maybe i’ll embrace the opposite, a philosophy of minimalism, anti-consumerism, and so on. i doubt that will make me happy, either.