Today I sat down to write a poetic ode to something or other that involved negative butterfly photography and cherry-red lip stain but I've been ousted, since the space where I currently like write is occupied with junk.
The junk is from Ben's luggage that somehow gets emptied all over the kitchen table, much to my chagrin, but today I found something that made me laugh for half an hour and I forgot to be all mopey and damp about life just for long enough today, and that's a good thing.
You see, the items on the table are the same items that Ben hastily shoved into his suitcase in order to make his flight Thursday night. There are clothes. Everything is black and inside out and maybe covered with some diet coke from the empty bottle I also found, wrapped in a t-shirt and at one point leaking profusely. There are four pencils, eight guitar picks that are a thickness he despises, seventeen loose leaf sheets with words scrawled illegibly on the back only of each one. There's three tea bags (china black) and two snickers bars (melted and refrozen) and a stack of blank CDs. Two silver rings that should be on his fingers (not his wedding band, thank heavens) and the watch he hates wearing. A broken Nintendo DS lite and two matchbox cars that Henry gave him for luck and "if you are bored". An empty lip balm tube and a crumpled and diet coke-soaked CD insert. His phone charger. Four sharpies and yes, another pencil. A vintage John Saul horror novel that he doesn't read but it seems to go everywhere anyway. Two notepads and a picture of the kids in a huge ziploc bag, the only things in the bag worth protecting from the soda, I guess.
I know he was in a hurry but really he pretty much always goes out neat and organized and comes back to me a teenage boy. None of that was the strange part though. The strange part was the drumstick.
Bitten in half.
Just the handle end arrived at the bottom of the bag and I could ask about it but really? It doesn't surprise me in the least. He did say when he gets hungry he'll eat anything.
I think I finally believe him.
