Disasternoon by Jonathan Moon

We slept till noon because we are both ugly in the morning. We woke up and dragged ourselves from the darkness of my bed room to the melancholy of my living room. The curtains are drawn over boarded up windows.

She tells me she’s an actress. Maybe she pretends she is someone else when the strobe lights are sweating her and she wraps her legs around the pole. Her lie makes us even because I told her she is safe.

“I have hopes and dreams.” She tells me because she can’t stop lying.

I don’t trust her limp because it catches me off guard. Physical frailty makes me nervous and she misinterprets the apathy etched on my face. She doesn’t like my whiskey breath because it reminds her of her dad.

She turns on the stereo and sweeps her arms across my coffee table. Cigarette butts flee their ash tray tombs and papers that used to mean something scatter all around. She climbs on the table and dances with tears streaming down her sunken cheeks.

“I can get low.” She tells me, and then proves it by slapping her bare ass against the table.

I cradle my whiskey bottle breakfast close to my chest to watch her as tears scorch my eyes. The dance is jerky, awkward, and sexy but it doesn’t match the funeral dirge blasting from the stereo at all. The morning was a waste and now the after noon is a disaster.