–How long have we known each other?
–Eh. A few years — six years, eight?
–When did you start to despise me?
Big canopy of treetops outside their nooklike breakfast space. They are barefoot. Cats meander about, eavesdropping, and motorcars hiss on the wet roads down the hill.
–Who says I despise you?
–You act as though you despise me. As though I were some nasty random person you had to endure — some buttcracking plumber, a ogling tree-trimmer, a guy begging money — a beggar —
–Despise is a very, uh, how to say — overwrought verb.
–So you don’t despise me? Even though you avoid contact with me.
–Oh no no no. Not a bit of it. And you had that nasty bug!
–Is it more apathy? I used to wake up and wonder what you were up to — or what you and I might get ourselves into in the course of a given day. It would cross my mind over coffee.
— Huh, what were you saying? I think a plane went over —
–I sense that you don’t wake up that way.
–I wake up in pain, I live in pain, I alleviate the pain, I function for a while, go to sleep not in pain (a difficult task for almost all of us, n’est-ce pas?), and again wake in pain. You are just another aspect of the pain-stuffed world — you are no one special.
[work in progress]
© 2019 Thomas N. Dennis
Thomas N. Dennis 