I never told you what it was like, after they yanked me from peewee Saturday for dick wagging. Funny thing was, I don’t remember you there. My wife. My thoughts were for the strangers around us—all our wonderful friends.
What if?
What if everyone took a tiny photo of my big dangle? What if everybody knew I was forever ruined and diseased and something they weren’t? What if peewee Saturday was during the cider-crisp Fall of 2020, and felt like droppin’ trousers inside L.L. Bean?
I could do a whole lot of things here. Apologize. But it’d be bad ideas wrapped around my throat. To keep you from talkin’. I just do things. Peewee Saturday. Nobody gives a finger-fuck.
Remember the honeymoon? We floated on Jungle Book Lagoon, and orangey lily petals rained down and you promised you’d love me forever, and we boned by that glitchy robo-bear? I wondered who was in charge, who was supposed to make that bear behave. Well, you couldn’t remember—you were donezo—and I was Anglo-peevish. All week I’d been thinkin’ to murder something, and once you were numb, I ran down a lemur and cracked his noodle with a coconut while the glitchy bear watched. And for the first time, at Euro Disney, I breathed.
So, we’re kind of strangers, you and me.
But later, after I was tased and cuffed and stuffed, and I sat in the dayroom feeling all that propaganda on my hands, I saw you on the news. I saw B roll of our kids weeping, while I screamed, “Europe’s a matriarchy!” and the umpire got me in a headlock. I saw your vapor tears and I heard you say, “Didn’t know, didn’t know.” And later, I dreamed that our wonderful friends cast you out. I dreamed your shithead parents turned heel to spite you. And I dreamed pictures of the life we hated together. And later when you called here to say, “Joseph,” I asked, “Do you remember the bear?”

Mike Itaya lives in southern Alabama, where he works in a library. He has work forthcoming in Oracle Fine Arts Review and The Airgonaut.