David Gets Out of It
by Kenneth Pobo
At the cleaners I’m waiting for my best suit to be handed back to me, clean and perfectly pressed. I’m going to my twenty-fifth high school reunion, and I want to look good. For nobody. In high school I didn’t care about looking good. Why look good for a geometry test or boys who waited by the door so they could mock me and beat me up? “Hi, little girl.” “Hey faggy boy!” “You’ll never escape us, not now or ever.”
They were wrong, somewhat. I did escape them, went to college several counties away, and eventually got a job selling furniture at Gabby’s Furniture Mart. The pay wasn’t great, but no one bothered me. I fell in love a few times, liked being in love, but mostly at the beginning. After three months the other person was a finished crossword puzzle.
Bobolinko was different. I thought maybe that would last. Something in me started to pull away—even when we seemed most happy, most connected. Bobolinko really was very sweet, maybe too sweet. Chocolate is delicious, but too much chocolate and I end up sneaking peanut butter crackers.
I tried to let Bobolinko down easy, lowering him gently into the grave of love. We “could still be friends.” We both knew that was a lie, the kind that gets said at such times. I wish that lovers were like a good commission. I can put it in the bank or use it for mad money. I never save. Everything is mad money, even time.
Kenneth Pobo has a collection of micro-fiction published from Deadly Chaps called Tiny Torn Maps. His chapbook of poems, Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose, was published this year by BrickHouse Books. His flash appears in A Coup of Owls, Blink Ink, Apple in the Dark, Ran Off With The Star Bassoon, Brittle Star, and elsewhere.