3 to 4 nights a week

3 to 4 nights a week...

She laid on the floor of this strange, but known woman’s garage.

Darkness falling all over her. From the tips of breasts and nose to the backsides of calves and tucked shoulder blades.

There was the turn of gravel. The first two then the second set of tires grinding imperfection against imperfection. The grating against the grating. A normally dispassionate sound all of the sudden besot her with anxiety.

She placed her left hand against the corresponding temple in reactionary movement.

Sara felt hungover.

She had consumed more than her fair share, hadn’t she? And was lulled into the satiety of what it is to look like. Then because of his...

Nevermind.

That part does not matter.

Comfort seemed to beget conflict. She became restive imagining what else was out there beyond wooden towers. She was taken advantage of and took advantage. She said mean things and tried to justify them because they were true.

And then he used her, because he could, because maybe he needed her to assuage the drum pulse of loneliness.

And he justified it. Because she had been destructive and callous.

And she let him, because of the throbbing pulse of loneliness that was so resounding in her own heart it reverberated off of street signs and beleaguered ill deserving pedestrians on their way to buy thumb tacks and coffee filters. And there was so much pain that it hollowed her out and left a person that simply could not care.

Sara hurt herself.

She slit one wrist, she slit the other.

In the disquiet of night, she laid there bleeding to death until the morning came.

...so the left hand to the corresponding temple.

Two seemingly kindred shapes that fit like one palm falls into the other.

All of the sudden, disparate.

The sun touched the tip of nose, the top of the chest.

Sara awoke.

She opened her eyes only to find herself on the same grey cement floor. As in dreams, so in life.

The vibrancy of light drained, the sounds of day mocking her.

This was Sara.

3 to 4 nights a week.

The skillet toss

Sara was at this point where she realized she had a hard time taking in large doses of anyone apart from herself. 

She wanted so badly to revel in the details instead of being annoyed by how Henry cooked 2 eggs over easy every morning leaving the sulfurous smell lingering on the patio… that had once been her patio. Her sanctuary, now sullied by fucking eggs. Their bloody yellows marring her once pristine cast iron skillet she found on a trip from coastal Rhode Island to the sumptuous verdancy of Vermont.

It was a Memorial Day weekend and Sara had just graduated from college. She had taken the Bethel exit off of 89 in search of gas and found herself pulling over to examine the goods and finery laid out at a road side yard sale. The convocation of household superfluity was tended by two young women similarly dressed in blue jeans and once-white aprons folded in half and knotted at the waist. They could have been mother and daughter, could have been sisters. Their interactions and clear level of irritation with one another implied a generational divide. The older woman seemed to hover above in the atmosphere, while her younger counterpart hinted at a smirk and a half eye roll in response to seemingly innocuous exchanges.

Goods were laid out with such a delicate hand and carefully tagged with fragile ribbons tied to paltry prices followed by the yard sale subtitle commensurate with gospel, “OBO” (...or best offer). All was clearly suggestion as opposed to decree. Sara lifted the pan with her left hand with a necessary deliberateness.

She was shocked by its elephantine hulk.

It felt in part weapon, in part paperweight, and in part practicality for a young woman teetering on the cusp of something. Well, ...clearly something.

She remembered an ex-boyfriend telling her of the Lady’s Cast Iron Skillet Toss at the Blue Hill Fair. It was a traditional manifest of athletic prowess and brazen domestic chutzpah. One wayward attempt went into the crowd narrowly missing his father’s balding head. There was momentary feigned outrage from mothers with children, but most dismissed it with a shrug and sudden fascination with passing clouds. Apparently, risking accidental bludgeoning was perfectly acceptable in the face of considering abandoning a time honored tradition.

Sara pictured herself at the fair. Skillet in one hand, making revolutions with her unsubstantial body, mirroring the form she remembered watching discus throwers execute in high school track meets.

One revolution.

Two revolutions.

And then, a cutting release.

Clearly, Sara and this skillet were fated. In her imagination, they were already storied.