Dorian Winter

https://tollbillforastranger

i’m getting spam text messages at 11:37pm: “the toll bill needs your attention: clear it easily

at https://icantstopthinkingaboutthefactthateveryoneionceknew.com/isdriftingawayfromme/andme

ltingtogether/15/1/24/           &                i’m thinking about dewdrops at dawn and the slight grin

of daylight through my windowpanes. i’m thinking about air-fried croissants and coffee brewed in

a paper bag. i’m thinking about the half-emptiness i got in the corner of your granny flat. the fool

reversed; the tower upright. i’d never get it. i’d never joke.

i used to be really scared of taking breaks. viciously frustrated. i didn’t get what there could be in

collective solitude. i didn’t get what there could be in sharing the gaps of our bodies. like tulle

spun inside warm saltwater. i was flowing and rotting while you texted me my name.

my dad has a pantry full of canned fruit, like some sombre mausoleum arranged in case we want

to bake something ‘summerier’.  if i was a canned fruit i’d be a pear. drifting in-between the

obvious apples (for pie), and the obvious pineapples (for upside down cake), and the obvious

plums (for spontaneous galettes). i’d be a pear because i’m fanciful entertainment. i’m the garnish

to your main course. won’t you feast your eyes upon me? well,

i’m never going to be a canned pear and i’m never going to click on the spam message. i’m always

going to be the hollowed swimming pool of a new stranger, my agoraphobic skin is always going to

taste like salt and sweat. i’m going to watch the light of my phone flicker for 20 more minutes and try

not to wonder what it could’ve been if we got along, if i was normal, or if i was a pineapple instead.