He sits in front of a wall of glass, and his glass, which was made of plastic, was already empty. He twirls the white paper that once covered his straw and tells me he is always early. I tell him I am always late. But only by about fifteen minutes. He says it’s because his mother was always late. I say that too. My mother was always late. I would be alone, embarrassed, and waiting at school; and she would arrive with the excuse of needing to finish her tea. I’m also drinking tea, only mine is cold and hers was only cooling. I like being like her. It’s funny, we say, how the same things in life affect people differently.
He talks a lot. He keeps apologizing for interrupting me although he’s not interrupting me. He is nervous, asking me if I’ve ever felt lonely, asking me if I own any rugs, and then asking me if I like my job. He talks about politics in a way that is a little too sanctimonious, a little too passionate, or a little too longwinded.
He’s trying, I tell myself. Why am I like this? I ask myself. I look behind him at a patch of sunlight flickering on the window of a high rise. On the architecture tour, the guide described that what this building had was called a glass curtain, and I imagined the glass pouring over the structure like warm chocolate falling over the edges of a cake. But what I am looking at is not really the glass but the clouds. The clouds and the light that isn’t the sun but its reflection. It was her fault, he says. She wanted me to go to her, and I did because I thought I loved her, but I shouldn’t have. He asks my age by posing a question about life in relationship to history. He’s older than me—too old, I think. It occurs to me, while following the light of the building travel along towards the glass of another building, that he’s also looking at a reflective surface. Is my body the fertile ground for which he is searching? Sorry, I’m just texting my sister, he says. Maybe this is an overshare, but—isn’t this the perfect photo? He shows me a child—his sister’s, not his.
Fulla Abdul-Jabbar is a writer, artist, and editor living in Brooklyn. She teaches in the Department of Writing at the Pratt Institute. She has performed, screened, or exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Electronic Literature Organization, Human Resources LA, the Altered Aesthetics Film Festival, the Brussels Independent Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. Her writing has appeared in DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, Jellyfish Review, Passages North, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Her debut book Who Loves the Sun was released in 2023 via Meekling Press.
