The Meal

Spaghetti. Third day in a row. Watery tomato sauce falls from a jar. A man unwraps a slice of cheap yellow cheese and breaks it up into large chunks onto his meal.

"My God," he thinks. "How did I end up this way. I should have married her when I was young."

That girl was thirty years ago. But the man can't let go. He pulls the tab on a can of warm diet coke and drinks the coke slowly. He'd rather be at the One Lucky and drink with his friends. But times are hard at the Square Corner, money is scarce.

So the man leans back uneasily; his mind is confused. He sits until a weakness comes. Then lastly he lays on a weary bed and speaks of her as his eyes slip into a dreamless sleep.