My Friend

Drives home in September after a day spent working a job that makes her feel like an asshole.

She parks her car in a space that costs two quarters an hour and sits on a bench that faces out toward Lake Harriet.

A couple she recognizes jogs by, with their golden retriever racing out in front of them, but she does not say hello.

Instead she watches a Swedish flag, which should be blowing in the wind, but instead hangs limply from the mast of a docked sailboat named Delusions of Grandeur. 

A small fish, which she can’t identify because she doesn’t know anything about fish, swims past the bow of the sailboat, without disturbing the milfoil that creeps up to the surface of the water.

It’s coming for me, my friend imagines. She pretends for a moment to talk to the fish.

She puckers her cheeks and says, but not aloud for that would be queer, Keep away fish, this is my bench, no one can sit here but me. 

- Alexander J. Theoharides