Sushi: A Fish by Any Other Name is Still a Fish

Cunt.
Lying, cheating whoremonger.
He’d rather sit there, staring, contemplating a ‘relationship’
with her. Not me.
I scroll my email logs, going back.
Fourteen months, twenty-three days.
So many broken promises in those fourteen months, twenty-three days.
It made me not like myself, the me I was with him.
The needy, whining, shutting my eyes to truth, ignoring the elephant conga line snaking around the room, head pounding me I became with him.
If I don’t respect myself, why should he?
If I don’t value myself, why should he?
Why should anyone?
So many broken promises in those fourteen months, twenty-three days.
The last trip, the test trip which I didn’t know was a test and was doomed to fail, questions written on decomposing paper with disappearing ink, letters rearranging themselves faster than a speeding bullet which stops in the cinder block wall behind my head, which ended in a bout of hepatitis A for me after eating oysters in August.
The realization that he was emailing her from my computer and clearing the cache in a futile attempt to keep me from knowing he was making plans
with her. Not me.
So many broken promises in those fourteen months, twenty-three days.
You want her, you want to fill your belly with sushi?
Go ahead. Eat. Eat as much as you can.
Eat, and when you are hungry an hour later, eat some more. Enjoy.
But she won’t take fourteen months, twenty-three days of broken promises to move on.
I have lost my taste for raw foods, for duplicity.
Give me hard-cooked eggs, pasturized milk, blackened catfish and grilled bok choy.
No more broken promises. Ever ever.