Page 550 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

But without food, without water,

only two to five weeks more

before that stops happening too.

It's not that I want to die,

I just don't fucking care to move.

This dump has become my only safe place, like maybe I can live here.

Outside, daylight comes and goes.

The sun climbs the wall,

then slides off it,

leaving me in the dark.

People pass my window, their shadows stretching across the curtains, reminding me the world’s still moving outside of me.

At some point, I sit up so I don't die.

My legs feel stiff and achy and not mine, and they forget how to move as I walk to the bathroom.

When I reach the sink, the floor tilts, the room spins, and darkness stalks the edges of my vision. A dizzy takes me, and I stumble forward, clutching the sink's edge to study myself.

I splash ice-cold water onto my face to shock myself awake, peel off the clothes I've been sweating in for days, pull on my jacket, then leave the motel room.

There’s a 24 hour diner down the street,

so I don’t have to drive,

which is safe for everyone.

It’s a cold, pitch-black night covered in mounds of dirty snow.

My boots crunch over salt, every exhale leaving me in clouds of white smoke, like the exhaust of the semis coming off the highway, brakes screeching as they pull into the lit-up truck stop across the road.

Stepping into the diner feels like stepping into 1997—cracked booths and faded menus, “Sex and Candy” playing low through a ceiling speaker.

A lonely stranger is hunched over a table here and there, nursing a mug of coffee, bags under their eyes.

I slide into a corner booth, table sticky.

But it’s good. This is good.

It’s exactly what I need, to become another lonely stranger in a diner—a numbing purgatory between love and hate to shut down in, where I don’t have to think about anything except what I’m going to eat and drink.

Coffee or tea.

Eggs or toast.

Booth or counter.

A waitress appears, looking like a future me, should I stay in this exact state for the rest of my life.

“Coffee first,