The CuisinArt

I don’t know your name. But I know your still water. The azure jewel. The waveless beauty. The lonely duck.

I dip my toes; she breathes into me, and I into her. I submerge and exist inside of her. What is time, but spinning hands? I should not have left you.

Palatial bliss. Tonight. The plangent whisper of the world, afar. Diaphanous hymn of the sleeping sea. Disgust for my ignoble beginning, and middle, and all that is not now. I will leave tomorrow. P, I will return unto you. Limpid vision, I now own. I need no camera. The moon is my flash. I am Me. Recumbent blue of water and of sky. I miss you. I will return unto you.

Just the crumbs. I’ve wanted to be something I could not define. I am the pet dog at dinner. The meal, inches away. Destined to feed off the crumbs. But I am now the king. I have eaten the meal, and it tasted of crumbs. Spurious satisfaction. There are only crumbs. I am Magellan, and this, my Mactan.

I left you on a cold morning. I escaped the gull. I left you on a cold morning, long ago. I traveled to no place, but deserted many. These pages are but space to fill. I will not follow their order. I will leave without eponym. I will return unto you. Eponyms are illusions. So am I.
All is empty, and all is filled. Palatial bliss, exuberant defeat. Sandboxes and ducks. Symphonies of aspiration, fragments of achievement.

Two days heretofore, I spoke of my final sojourn. Two days heretofore, I gave money to a band. Tireless attempts to make sense of my departure. I can’t. I’m an old man. I am tir…

–

She stroked the rip in the crumpled, faded paper. Some coffee had spilled on it. Probably in the preliminary investigation.
“According to the airport employee who encountered him, he just began ripping pages out. Though, from what remained, it says he was gone for 23 days. Is this accurate?”
She continued to stare at the letter. She was not numb, nor emotionless, nor shocked. She wasn’t relieved or heartbroken. She just felt weak.
“Is this accurate?”
“No. He’s been gone two and a half years.”
“He became very aggressive in the airport and began ripping apart several notebooks he had on his person. He showed severe signs of dementia before the collapse.”
“They had begun shortly before he disappeared.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Silence. In the oven, toasted bruschetta burned. At an airport outside Puntacana, a trio of musicians kicked their hat at passengers, as they stepped off the plane. In a small town on the coast of the Black Sea, Atlan took his last picture before the small LCD went black. In Segovia a wind blew threw the town as the citizens celebrated a victory of the Spanish National Soccer team. In central New York, a duck approached a small dock outside of an unassuming lake house, where no one fed him.
“And I just want to confirm the spelling on your name ma’am, P-E-N-E-L-O-P-E?”
She stroked the corned of the crumpled letter and laid it on the table, next to the battered leather journal with a broken strap.
“My name is Katherine.”