by Joshua Parks

The men’s restroom at the Bremerton Bus Station looked exactly as it had a week before.  Written in blue spray paint, the graffiti across from the sinks was still the most outstanding feature of the room, sprawling itself gracefully across the white, poorly painted glass of the window to traverse its peeling metal frame.  Trailing off on the gray textured wallpaper just above the urinal, the message was indecipherable.  Whoever had written the note had failed to make it legible, or just didn’t care if anyone could read it.  I certainly couldn’t.  It occurred to me that the graffiti probably wasn’t meant to communicate anything and its creator merely got off thinking about the people who would try to translate his gibberish into something meaningful.  A week ago, I had made a determined attempt to decode the blue mess, but I eventually gave up.  It wasn’t readable then, and it certainly hadn’t changed during the week.

Seven days.  The fleeting thought of the events that preceded my failed interpretation of the graffiti on the window could still speed my pulse and shorten my breath.  I gripped the edge of the cream counter to steady myself in preparation for vomiting, the phase that had generally followed hyperventilation during most of my panic attacks in the last week.  It didn’t come this time.  I would have taken this surprise as a sign that I was recovering, but I knew it was only attributable to the fact that I couldn’t remember the last thing I ate, and I knew I hadn’t eaten in the last three days.