Week something or other.

Todd: You know you really have to be careful about what you name your kid because you're going to have that tattooed on your neck for the rest of your life.

M: Good point.

Some nights I just get online and stare at pictures of people that I don't know. I keep clicking though, watching them take a vacation on nice blue waters, the white sands nearly blinding or perhaps a weekend in the mountains with people that if I had had some other sort of life I would have known and liked. I imagine myself there, sharing a drink with all those people who are like stars in the clear night sky, visible yet millions of miles away. I think that they definitely would have liked me to be there, I would have bought them all shots at the tiny corner bar with the Irish waitress who called us all honey. I could have taken pictures of all of them together and tagged it the next day under the title, weekend party with friends. We'd have gotten along so much better if only we knew each other. I leaned towards the window and petted my cat softly, not waking her.

But who knows, maybe tomorrow I'll be walking down the street, and I'll recognize someone that I don't know. And I'll stop them in the road at mid-day, the sun making diamonds on the sidewalk and we'll talk about the quality of the dogwoods, how we both enjoy blossoming trees and aren't the pears in rare form this year. We'll look around at the houses on the street painted in bright colors, and with cozy lawns and decorative flowers that don't remind us of home. We'll wonder why we don't live there.

After a while it will become strange that we've never even shared a cigarette, or drank coffee while the rain beat slowly against the sill, making patterns that a children could make sense of. If we stared at them, we wouldn't have a damn thing to say. It will suddenly occur to us that what we've been saying all along about dogwoods, and the length of the winter, and the quality of this year's festivals all really mean the same thing, I'm lonely. And then they'll say, "excuse me" and lean down to pick up a piece of shit that their dog has put in the gutter. And we'll stand awkwardly together, with the plastic bag, and the steaming shit, wondering why even this moment could have gone so impossibly wrong.

In the morning I'll write a story about it, but this time I'll leave the dog at a neighbor's house. We'll spend the afternoon on hard sidewalks, admiring the large trees and their adequate tree boxes bordered by variegated pansies. We'll say of the weather, "It's nice. Damn fine day for a stroll," until we grow tired of one another and go looking for someone else that we don't know.

Some other day:

M: I'm going to name our child Mia. I don't care if K already has a niece named Mia.

S: I don't know.

M: I fathered that child, now you stay away!

S: That's kind of hard for me to pull off.

M: I'm going to make you have a cesarean section at four months and then inject the baby into my stomach.

S: Injected? I don't know why I'm wasting all this money on an OBGYN when I could just come to you.


Reminders are good.

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