He’s in front of me, features dripping like a Dalí clock. There’s no background, no context, only him, floating in a rectangle crudely drawn with wax crayon.
His features are exaggerated – a powder-blue jumper stretches over his overinflated balloon of a stomach, and his lips droop fat and wet past his knees.
His face is sad because I am breaking up with him again. But I’m not sure I believe the pushed-out bottom lip anymore. In truth, I never really trusted its validity. I used to squint my eyes to try and peer through the thin veil. It always felt cartoonish to me. Clown-like. Designed specifically to make my young body feel guilt.
But I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything. I am an observer, outside of this rectangle scrawled in a child’s hand. For the first time I don’t feel anything, and I am telling him it is over without the prefix of anxiety or panic or fear.