You held one hand to your belly, swollen with your choices. He stared at you across the table, and both of you looked at me, the three of us the only ones in the diner that night.
Maybe you were having a girl. Did the thought of her one day sitting at a diner alone, barely pieced together, scare you? The plate of food in front of me was the first real meal I had eaten in weeks. My backpack was empty, save a few articles of dirty clothing and the notebook I always carried with me.
I ordered a BLT with extra fries, and a chocolate milkshake, which was served in a tall, fluted glass with a swirl of whipped cream and a cherry on top. It was a kind of pleasure I had forgotten existed in the world.
I pushed the stained cuffs of my yellow hoodie up to my elbows and ate the fries, slathered in sweet ketchup, three at a time, pulled napkin after napkin from the chrome dispenser on the brown formica table top. I felt you noticing me, felt your warmthβor maybe your pity. I hid my face. The concert venue. The drinks. How I dressed myself quietly and slipped out the door onto that Portland street and kept my eyes on the ground.
How it felt like everyone I passed was watching me, like they knew somehow, and maybe they blamed me, too. I tried to outrun myself, down the West coast until my car broke down and I continued traveling east to the mountains where I met a man who offered me a ride.
