2 years 11 months 7 days and 8 hours

Dear Cecilia,

It's been 2 years 11 months 7 days and 8 hours since I last saw your face.

About a week ago, I was at the park at around 5 in the morning; you know how I love those hours at the beginning of the day, where everything is shaded slightly orange. I was sitting on a swing, with my toes buried in muddy silt, and my wet hair piled on top of my head and held up with chopsticks. I watched the sun rise up over the skyline and it reminded me of eggs Benedict. The yellow yoke of the sun sitting placidly on the egg-white clouds situated on top of the pink ham of the atmosphere and the toasted brown of the English muffin horizon; I started to hope it would rain hollandaise sauce all over the park and the road and the buildings and the streets. Just so that my sunrise breakfast could be complete. Breakfast always was your favorite meal…

We would go out in the early hours, and run down to that little pastry shop… God, what was that place called? Prosperous Pastries? Something strange like that… You always got a cinnamon roll, and I would get a croissant or something, and then we’d run, with our crinkly paper bags, all the way to the fountain in the park. The ledge was always wet, and we would circle around, looking for a patch of marble that was dry. Eventually we’d just sit in the water, letting it seep into our pajamas and laughing between bights of morning treats. We couldn’t have been older than 15.

I’m waitressing again, did you know? Of course you didn’t. Well, I am. The costumers are still as wrong as ever. But it’s nice to have something to do with my hands, to keep me busy.

I still love running the big dishwasher. All those bright white plates and bowls piled into the dingy avocado green dish rack. I hoist up the dish rack into the open machine, the steam everywhere tickling my skin and giving me goose bumps from the heat. And then you have to spray them with the big hose, the water sounds like someone taking a hammer to a wall, a loud thunk followed by the scream of the scorching hot water rushing through the tiny rubber nozzles. Once every bit of food has been propelled off by the surging, spurting, jetting flood of water, I hang up the hose on a hook. Then I push the dishes further into the dishwasher and pull the lever that lowers the big metal tank over the plates, like a silver salver cover coming down on a platter full of food. You know it’s secure when you feel the little click of the latch grabbing onto itself, then you have to start it, by pushing the big red button. Then suddenly, everything is covered in steam, it seeps out from sides of the machine, and everything is hot and humid, my skin turns moist and it gleams under the florescent lights of the kitchen. But that only lasts for a second, before the rubber seals itself around the bottom of the dishwasher and all the steam disperses and sets me back in reality. And then… everything is cold and dirty again.

And people always wonder why I volunteer for dish duty.

Write me, please. Please, please, please write back. But I know you won’t.

Your friend,

~M~