Mother's maiden name, high school mascot, first pet

I was sitting at my usual table chewing dumbly on the space between my left thumb and forefinger when she came in and started poking around in the different whole coffee beans they had for sale in these troughs that worked like automatic dog food bowls, which maybe me seeing them that way was a thesis statement but I doubt it. I spent every day getting my light and heat from ugly buzzing fluorescence instead of the sun, from the time that the morning was thick and black like an old television screen until the sun was being swallowed up by the shadows of the buildings downtown, so if I liked to come out here on my day off and sit by the window drinking black coffee and writing down things I wished I could afford to do with myself while a man played checkers in the corner with his grandson then the least she could do was never exist again ever.

Maybe God had done me that favor or maybe he just liked to watch my hands shake, which I can’t blame him. I wrote down see Tibet and find something like zen while she browsed. Our eyes didn’t exactly meet but I knew she saw me when she turned around because there was this flutter step of I don’t know.

What do you do? I wrote down take a lot more photographs with a nice camera while she placed her drink order. The backs of her arms and legs were a darker brown than I had ever known them to be, a rich and natural tan, and I wrote down fire a nuclear warhead at the sun. It was petty to feel betrayed by the employee who made her drink, but traitors come as they come.

I knew she wasn’t looking on purpose, and she either faked or made a phone call on her way out the door. That’s what the years and all that love and pain were worth to her. All that sharing of what we were, how we were experts on each other, the top minds in our field. She didn’t turn and look back but I waved out the window anyway, half-hearted and partway dead but a greeting for whatever that means.