Autonomic, Again by Steve Gerson, Bloody Mary

"I'm sorry, Jennie," he said, again, for the twentieth time that week, maybe for the twentieth time that hour. He'd lost track.

She shook her head, saying, "Your sorries don't work anymore, Jack. They're like the loose change I find under the couch cushions, next to lint and dead skin. You say it so often that it's like your breaths taken, your heartbeats, without thought, without feeling. It's autonomic, Jack."

"I'm sor . . . ," he almost said, his autonomic reflexes sparking in spasms. He had become a jangle of ganglia, more random nerve cells than sentient being. "Jennie, I mean it. No more. It'll never happen again. Honest."

"Autonomic," she said. "Do you even know what you're sorry for this time?"

He paused, as if stuck at a crossroad with oncoming traffic, all targeted toward colliding with him. As if he were an addled air traffic controller at Heathrow with 50 planes stacking up to land in heavy fog. "Uh," he paused again, running through possibilities, then mentally ticking off items like a cashier at a checkout lane. Maybe this sorry was because he kept talking at the movie yesterday, peeving those around him. Maybe because he left the kitchen light on all night, again. Maybe because he kept her awake with his snoring, but how would he know? He was asleep, damn it. How was he supposed to control himself during REM moments? Maybe because he lost $100 at poker last Tuesday with his buddies (really it was $250, a tiny lie, he thought). Maybe because he had covertly ogled the cute waitress at Sunday brunch when she delivered his third Bloody Mary with an extra shot of vodka and two strips of bacon. Maybe because he forgot Jennie's birthday, again, but she always said she hated getting older. He just didn't want to remind her. "I was being thoughtful," he said out loud, autonomically, more like an involuntary hiccup than a reasoned thought.

"What?" Jennie asked. "Thoughtful? Wishful thinking Jack. That's the problem. Thoughtlessness is more your speed. In fact, that's all I'm asking for, thoughtfulness. Think of me, Jack, not just yourself. "

"I'm sorry, Jennie," he said, again, for the twentieth time that week, maybe for the twentieth time that hour.

 About the author 

Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Vermilion, In Parentheses, and more, plus his chapbooks Once Planed Straight, Viral and the soon to be published The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety from Spartan Press. 

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