And because things have been moving towards another transition, with changes in our daily routine occurring irregularly, I ended up having lunch with you. Normally it would have been fine. I would not have minded. I would not even have thought of it at all. Today, however, was different.
You were talking as you'd always done, and I was listening, although I hadn't noticed this time I was doing so more intently than I should have. I suppose you can say it was the first time I'd ever heard you actually speak. How lonely you sounded beneath the hollow shell of fantasies you'd built around your soft core. What's even sadder, was that I think you couldn't even hear your inner self talking anymore. I was looking at you, words floating out from your mouth and evaporating into the atmosphere mere centimeters from your skin. Everything -- every lie -- was thin and shapeless and empty.
On one hand I wanted to shout at you, try to break through that phantasm blanketing your person. I wanted to claw at you right then and there, hurt you, stab you with the fork in my left hand. "Can you hear yourself talking?!" But I think even if I shouted at the top of my lungs, you wouldn't -- couldn't -- hear me anyway. The walls you'd built were too thick; your life, too numbingly pristine. I stabbed at the lone slice of pork on my plate instead.
On the other hand, I thought of trying a different approach. I would look at you straight in the eye, and tell you in a voice not unlike the low rustle of trees at midnight how, the contrast apparent from your secure and sheltered lifestyle, I live everyday in constant fear of losing my job. How each minute, I force-feed into my mind the thought that I have to, have to, have to survive without having to rely on anyone for anything. How terribly unjust and uncompromising circumstances can be at the most inconvenient of times, and how I only put up with it just because. I wanted you to hear me, hoping it would be a catalyst for your long-overdue introspection.
I did neither. Instead, I let out a long, heavy exhale. I pushed my plate aside, nodded at some long-drawn opinion you had about something or other, bit my lip, and swallowed hard. I felt a solid, metallic clunk at the pit of my stomach. I'm not having lunch here tomorrow.
