#62

Her friends made her take cabs—at least until she mended. They called the cars, they buckled her in, they made sure she got to her destination no matter how close or far.

Each time, she slunk like sap down a tree into the rear right side seat, sticky and sad.

In the first car, which she entered still crying, she hid her face from the driver and looked down. She saw a half empty water bottle in the back seat pocket in front of her and realized how thirsty she was.

In the third car, her eyes were puffy and moist, and after greeting the driver in a shaky voice, she again looked down and noticed a half empty water bottle stuck in the side of the door. It reminded her to drink from the bottle she now had in her bag.

When a half empty bottle appeared rolling around the floor of the back seat of the sixth car, she snatched it up with the little momentum she had left and sighed, tired of being chased by metaphors. Outside, she poured its warm water out, staining the sidewalk only temporarily. The crunch of the bottle’s thin plastic between her hands startled her— how could something so flimsy once stood so erect and full? And she held it like a dead mouse until she found a trash bin.

As she responded with a blue thumb’s up to her friend’s text asking if she made it home safely, her dry heaving eyes walked her to a destination that didn’t matter.