We stood in the kitchen, wearing miniature bathing suits, eating pickles. I watched her pick up the jar that held only vinegar, spices and cucumbers. Her eyes scanned the label on the back, a smile spread across her face. Pickles are zero calories. In our picnic basket, we only packed pickles. We walked the mile up our road to the pond, I knew the thought that ran through all of our heads, most definitely in hers. The thought of how many calories were burned with each step, how many pickles she'd have to eat to be fulfilled, how many pickles equals 1 calorie if pickles have no calories. We reached the pond, green, murky, and algae filled. We had no intention of swimming in it. She pulled her beach towel out of our basket and laid it down gently across the dock. The sun was shining strongly as we tanned our thinning bodies. Entertaining one another's toxicity, no better way to look skinny than to be tan. After 2 hours, she pulled the jar of pickles out of the basket, now warmed by the sun, but still zero calories.
Today I woke up and the first thing I saw was that green mug. The mug that used to be hers. Broken, nearly perfectly in half, set gently on my shelf. She was always up before me. Her thin body resting on a coach too big for the space it filled. A large coffee cup, green nearly chartreuse, rested on her left thigh, held upright by one pinky. Downton Abbey played on her tv at a volume too low to be heard even by a dog. I could smell the coffee burning at the bottom of the pot. 6 cups and 3 cigarettes before 10 was her style. I remember the feeling of stumbling out of bed, pouring my own cup of burnt coffee, into an orange mug, now still intact, and sitting close to her on the coach. The air was so incredibly warm, and the feeling of her warmth next to me was nearly overwhelming. I would lean on her shoulder and ask her how she slept, and what she dreamt of. We would make sweet small talk, I would bathe in the sweet sound of her voice as she ran her hands through my hair. I used to wish that I could start every morning like that, with her, sitting on a coach in a warm apartment, surrounded by the smell of burnt coffee and coconut body lotion. Now, as I rise from my bed and the pinch of green catches my eye, as I walk to the kitchen, fill my orange mug with unburned coffee, and sit, alone, staring at the brick above the fireplace, I still feel the warmth of her apartment, and remember how it felt to sit by her on those sweet burnt coffee mornings.