DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Dunkin Donuts Part III- Unedited

 

                A month after getting out of the hospital, I visited the Dunkin Donuts for the third time.  I had been keeping my journal the whole time- I had been writing poetry about busses passing (the fact that I was waiting for the bus to come for twenty minutes on my way there stayed with me in unease and made me restless- Chicago winters are terrible), and birds blind in their right eyes almost crashing into windows (because they are just so clean and indistinguishable as air from glass), and Dunkin Donuts’ 2-6pm iced coffee/iced tea specials (Is the small really just as good as the large, despite them being the same price?).  That fateful day I took my spot in the back of the Dunkin Donuts, waiting for someone to come and talk to me, as unrealistic as that might be in reality- I know people usually just walk up to other people in Dunkin Donuts and strike up conversations about heaven and the two people that died with Jesus; but at that spot, in Chicago, on Earth, in this time and now, and in front of the vent that circulates warm air throughout the store and past my ankles, anything was possible.

                This time it was a girl: a blonde-haired girl with almost too much blush (the kind that looked almost too obvious, but looked good on girls with big cheeks) that appeared a couple inches shorter than me when she sat down across from me.  She pulled out a notebook and flipped it open to a poem that I read quietly, and out loud:

The sun is light, the truth is dark,

I am alone and through the sparks

That melt at my fingertips and fall on my pillow

And night I’m, alone,

And always with you, still though

 

I read it and looked up to her.

“So, are you going to feed me some crazy BS that makes me stay up all night, in doubt of if it was real or not?”

She turned her head away from me and I could see the space under her eyes turn red.

“No,” she said, I just want to talk.”

“About what?”  I asked.

“Do you ever run by the lake?”  She asked while I was pawing at my smores donut.

“I do,” I said, “Sometimes when the weather is nice.”

“I went yesterday,” she said, “and I was holding my spray tightly in my pocket, as it was dark out and I was alone.  It was cold so there was hardly anyone left on the path, and I turned the corner so that I couldn’t see cars passing anymore.  I was going to continue through until I got to my usual place where I turn around, until I saw two guys that looked drunk with disorientation.”

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“One thing lead to another, but to sum it up they scared the crap out of me, and I think I got away from them without there being a confrontation because they saw I was holding on to something in my pocket.  I think they were drunk, though.”

“Scary,” I said.

“Do you ever stay awake at night, wondering why things happen as they do, why the Earth rotates one way, and not another?  What if Earth has a twin that rotates in the opposite direction?  What if every little thing I say and do determines the volume and existence of everything that has potential to happen in the future?  What if-“

She pointed to the window.

“The Hawks win the Cup this year just because I was able to predict that that bus is going to begin to pass us in exactly half a second?”

And then a bus passed with a picture of Jonathan Toews on the side of it, his “C” covering part of a window.

“What if at the very moment they win the game-winning goal a five-year-old fan falls from the lap of his father and breaks his arm, which leads to his slapshot being a little crooked, a little bent, for the rest of his life?”

 And the girl propped her right foot on her left leg and began to tie her shoe.

“And what if that boy is the team captain of the Blackhawks twenty years from that season, and on his way home from practice he saves a girl that is screaming out for help, the victim of some crazy person?  And what if he takes his stick and smacks the guy in the head, this leaving him as the hero of the girl, his only words being, “I know it can be hard to defend yourself.  But I was here.”

I didn’t know what to say, so the words tumbled out of my mouth.

“What if I told you my greatest fear at this moment is that I will never have a hero like the guy you were describing in your story?”

“I would say,” she said, “That you have a lot to think about tonight.”

And then she got up, pushed the chair into the table, and walked out of the door.  And I was left with the paper she ripped out.  It read:

The night can be cold, but I

Have my sunroof, and I can stare outside, all night, even though

I can’t be there, in the sky,

But it is the closest I have ever been to heaven,

When I can feel the cold leak in through the sunroof,

But still feel the warmth that I feel

When I think of you.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.