When She Becomes A Bad Habit

When She Becomes a Bad Habit

And it wasn’t at first that it happened. In fact, it took a long time for the clouds to eventually drift over the small park, darkening in-between the lines, the picture-perfect image he had in his head for the afternoon’s spontaneity. The rain had to gradually fall on his new green blazer. He didn’t like how he looked in it. In fact, it was painfully obvious how uncomfortable he was sitting on that wooden bench, placed in the center of everything, in the honor of another rich bureaucrat, somebody who was nothing like him. There would never be a restless stationary object dedicated to his elaborate list of failures anywhere.

The first few drops didn’t feel like anything other than coincidental bad timing, nor did the slow drone of his watch ticking from second to second. However, as the diminishing mood set in, the rigorous realization that the wait was undeniably longer than he had expected, and even more so, he decided that for the first time in his life, there wasn’t any legitimate reason for him to continually subject himself to such reliable disappointment, and as he slowly grabbed his rain jacket and stood up, he left the already withered rose bought from the green bucket in the local drugstore across the street, on the bench, to gradually get drenched and slowly deteriorate back into the earth.

It would serve as a subtle reminder to all the cold and wet passers-by, that there was once something so important to wait for, even if the wait was longer than expected. The walk home was fresh, despite the subsequent influenza. He was free from all the variables that had once weighed him down like chains at the bottom of the ocean. Even the warmth of his apartment didn’t necessarily level his head more so than the rain had at the instant of it’s slow decent.

His muddy shoes dried by the heater as his jacket dripped on the rusted metal hook by the door. The small red light blinked on his answering machine, like his watch and thoughts before it, each timed moment with or without red light seeming to tear away at all he once knew and thought he was in love with, and as he heard her seemingly apologetic voice through the crisp drone of the receiver, he saw only one plausible solution to such a half-hearted attempt at an excuse. The delete button was slowly pressed.

“All messages erased” the robotic voice chimed in. He sighed, what for the first time in his life, couldn’t be anything other than the soft comfort of potential relief. He was over her.


(P.S. potentially use this for 709 Comp if plausible)