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.
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