While you are packing yourself up in a box to be shipped across the country, I am vacuum sealing our memories, which you gave to me as a going away present, in a special polyethylene bag and injecting them with preservatives so I can eat them on a later date because SARAN WRAP WON’T DO! The bulge of plastic shrinks around the outer edges until it is nonexistent. Locked in an air tight seal. For a second, it seems pointless, but the infomercial did guarantee it would keep things “fresher” and make them “last longer.” 100% waterproof. Prevents freezer-burn for up to four months. Money saved. Less waste.
You fasten the flaps of cardboard together with clear packaging tape, and enclose yourself inside.
Hearing the squeak of the tape ripping from the spool, and the POP when the adhesive umbilical cord snaps like an elastic waistband, I cope.
In a permanent marker, I write 7-27-12 in the white box on the top corner, labeled: EXPIRATION DATE. The ink smears on the polyethylene. The numbers aren’t numbers, but fat messy streaks of black ink. No one else can read this but me and that makes me feel good.
*
I didn’t see the post man/woman pick you up or slide you into the back of their little van because I was sleeping.
I think about defrosting our memories in the microwave and sautéing them in a pan with olive oil, cayenne, the liquid extract of daydreams, evaporated tear salt, butter, garlic, and a pinch of nostalgia over medium heat. The dish would be served on a plate made out of a picture frame with french fries for a side dish, and a cup of coffee. At the kitchen table. Alone. Watching cartoons. Savoring it because it will be the most delicious thing in the world. No, the universe. No, wait, the multiverse.
FUCK YEAH!
I would be so proud of my accomplishment because no one ever did it before. Just like how no one has ever stepped onto the surface of Jupiter.
And cooking something that complicated from frozen food and making into a delicacy would be an accomplishment of an equal or greater significance for humanity, at least, in my eyes.
*
Now.
It’s five weeks past the 27th.
You sent yourself back across country.
Soon, you’re sending yourself somewhere else.
Not across the country, but closer.
But still far away.
Freezer-burn is cultivating a civilization on the plastic.
Scraping the frost away, I can see grey orbs of old age on the surface of our frozen block of memories. It defrosts, and galaxies of swirling yellowish-green bacteria begin to rotate and come back to life.
Expired. The present you gave me is inedible.
It smells like the breath of a distracted person who’s not paying attention, and has puppy legs rotting in his/her lungs. He/she used to believe in puppy love, but then severed its spinal cord with a boxcutter and ate it. He/she cannot digest it. And he/she is repeatedly exhaling directly into my face.
I gag. I vomit, and throw our memories (your present?) in the garbage, and immediately take the trash out to the dumpster behind my apartment. Because our memories got buried under fish fillets, ice cream, soft pretzels, pizza bagels, and vodka. And personal interpretation. In silence.
And I feel ashamed.
And I feel like shit.
Because it’s a fucking waste.
I turn on the tv.
It’s a commercial about world hunger: “Think of the starving children in Africa YOU FUCK!”
