Falling

​

I stumble into my skinny studio at Avenue C and East 4th. After a double bodega shift, I fail to dish out a fresh offering of Sally’s high-protein low-carb salmon-flavored food. Normally that’s Samantha’s job yet this week it’s fallen to me. Every time I’ve served Sally dinner, she never even purrs with appreciation. 

​

I devour a bowl of alphabet soup. Why can’t I be a boy again? Slipping and sliding into sleep, I dream of the cat I cuddled with back when I didn’t know the meaning of rising rent. I buried her fresh feline bones the day before I graduated from high school. Snapping awake, I shuffle to the bathroom.

​

With a stuffed bladder in fat moonlight, I defenestrate Sally. She lands on her paws after an Alphabet City trip out my lone window’s slapped open mouth. From a side alley, she springs up ladders to claw and hiss behind locked glass on the fire escape.

​

I scream out from the gun of my tongue: you dreamt of tossing me out my window. So I tossed you out. See your dream escaped out of your ears and spilled across our shared floor. I glared at your betrayal replaying like a film reel.

​

As I turn away, I type out a text to Samantha. I never hit send. She defenestrated my heart during last week’s incessant blooming that mocked my unloved self.

​​

Sally leaps back inside. Before the unhinged jaw of my unlocked window, we masticate a watermelon that I bought with Samantha. I must admit she’s my ex. Black seeds tumble out into a wind stampede.