h2>Dating : flash fiction: shine
german picks up the spoon, turns it over, and licks the peanut butter off, and pulls out of his mouth a clean and shiny utensil that his son jacob admires, jacob claps and says he should eat it like that again — german says that maybe his mother could eat the peanut butter the same way, when she arrives from work, never a certainty, which jacob knows and why he responds with a frown — he picks up the spoon and moves it towards his mouth, but german grabs the spoon and says no, it’s already been used —
these shiny things in jacob’s world
revolve around his mind, he walks along the lockers at school, the handles shine chrome, and he runs his hand along them, they bump into his palm — these shiny things are metal, they are hard, they don’t forgive, so after his palm runs over four or five of these handles his hand hurts, the metal bruises, all shiny things can be like that — jacob picks up the spoon again while german his father searches through his phone, not noticing, and jacob raps the spoon on his bare knuckles and his father turns his head, no, no, but it’s too late, jacob has already committed the act, brings pain upon himself, disappointing his father, who would tell his mother if she were to return home today before jacob falls asleep —
jacob lies in bed
he sees stars shining through his window, he hears the opening of the door downstairs, probably his mother, he wants to show her the small bruise on one of his knuckles, how he made it, she will be shocked but not for long because she’ll move onto the next thing — german had checked for what he called any permanent damage on jacob’s fingers, he told jacob that he was lucky, and he put the spoon in the washing machine and ordered him to dress in his pajamas, he allowed jacob a half hour on the computer before going to sleep, he did play but he tired after 15 minutes and told his father that he wanted to go to bed —
he hears the rumbling of his mother’s arrival
while he counts the number of stars out his window, he’s at 22 but he doesn’t want to count too fast, he wants the count to be right, once sure he will write down the total in his notebook, draw the positions of the stars as they appear in his window, so he’ll know that if one appears that he didn’t notice before he will be able to check his drawing to ensure that it isn’t already accounted for — his mother enters jacob’s bedroom, jacob closes his eyes as if asleep and she bends over to kiss him on the head, even with his eyes closed he’s certain that he counted 24 stars —
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
