Sunday Morning

by Shaun Terry

I had been staring at the steam from my tea for the past I-don’t-know-how-long. I watched as the particles, all stuck together, quickly pulled apart and disappeared. The steam were constantly changing. There were millions of particles coming and going, coming and going, only to be lost. Where did they go?

 

It had a certain majesty.

 

This paper-ish bag that had been packaged in Samford, Connecticut, of green tea, mint, and lemongrass (among other things), the contents of this little parcel that I often craved, that cost me seventy-five cents; its flavor was given a name by some person dressed in “Business Casual” attire, in Samford or some other stupid place, and it was called by some stupid name that gave reference to some form of Buddhism that was popular among stupid Westerners; this stupid tea that I, in my ignorance and with my unrefined palate, had a stupid sort of childish adoration for, like a fat, dumb kid who likes saccharine breakfast pastries and cheap plastic action figurines of poor role models, this maybe-ridiculous tea created this marvel. No, actually; the water and the heat caused this, but that’s pedantic, isn’t it?

 

To watch the steam is a mistifying, awing experience. But that’s all the natural world, isn’t it? We can learn everything, but if we watch the actual world around us, and stop worrying about the fake world of social norms and trends and politics and micro- and macro- and issues here-and-there and logic and emotions and order and- who the fuck cares?

 

White shit is emanating from my breakfast beverage; dammit.

 

 

She.
She is all I could want. But now…

 

Now? I don’t.
I do.

 

I’m unallowed.
Goddammit.

 

There is a beautiful, rare, flawless, perfect, radiant, opportune, brilliant, perfect, opulent, supple, dynamic, euphoric, perfect thing. And it’s behind this nearly-invisible veil.

 

I try to not see the veil, and if I duck and squint and focus, I don’t see the veil. But I feel the veil. I feel it beneath the padding of my feet. It smothers me, and I choke on slimy, slippery saline.

 

I want to want. You, thing, are the thing for me; the thing I’ve waited and lived for. Anyone could see. Anyone would tell me to run for the thing and never stop running until the running caused me to collapse like the man in Marathon.

 

But I can’t.

 

I can’t save Us.

 

 

Maybe particles of steam sometimes find each other again.

 

How can I drink this tea?
How could I ever ever again?

 

I wish that I had only to hurt myself, so as to save you the trouble.