Untitled (Part III)
16.
I do this thing sometimes where I think, and then I think too much, and then I make a big to-do about nothing. Then everything gets fucked up real good and for no reason. Some people call that being too caring; some people call it being too analytical. My moonbeam, she says it’s a product past relationships and my own insecurities. I’m fairly certain it’s just called being an idiot.
17.
We sit there for a bit longer. The atmosphere is lighter now. There are a few men fishing off the end of the pier. One of the men, a short man but stout, battles his fishing rod with a great ferocity. I stand up and look over the edge. A sting ray fights attached to the end of his line. The short man reels and pulls and gives just as well as he takes. The sting ray flails in the water, struggling to release itself from the fisherman’s hook. I sit back down on the bench. “There’s a sting ray down there,” I say. She gets up and looks over the edge. “That’s crazy! Oh my goodness.” She says. “Do you think he’ll give up?”
“The fisherman?” I ask. “No, the sting ray.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Depends on how much he wants to live.”
18.
Sometimes when I walk up and down the pier I imagine that I’m standing at the edge of a plank on some far off pirate ship in the middle of the ocean. The wood beneath me cracks and creaks with each step and I picture myself slowly edging towards the end of some tiny piece of wood, my weight bending the board, daring it to crack, with each step I take. The captain and his scurvy crew holler and shout and they clank their swords against the ship hoping, waiting, for me to plunge to my demise. I hold out, hands tied, putting of certain death for as long as possible. The wood strains as my feet reach the end and with a final nudge from the captain’s gun I fall into the icy drink below.
19.
“You want to get out of here?”
“Sure. I’m getting kind of cold.”
“Let’s go.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“I hate that word.”
“Everything?”
“Fine.”
“Why?”
“Because you always say it. And you’re always not just ‘fine’.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I am what I am.”
“That’s a load of shit.”
“I’m fine. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Let’s just go.
20.
I do my best to let it go. There’s always something to argue about. We’re always bickering about something. Maybe that’s why we never worked out. Or maybe we just never cared enough to make it work, to make us work for each other. Stop thinking. Just enjoy right now. As we walk away, shoulder to shoulder, a yell rings out behind us. I look back for a brief moment. The short man reels up the sting ray.
