holding on

They filled your voicemail until you threw your phone into their crowded mouths—the beaches, relentlessly dialing your numbered days; beggars for “any spare change of plans.”  All you had to offer were some leftovers:  naturally-tanned, pristinely-molded comeliness that you’d been carrying with you longer than only your mother and father could remember. “You’re obviously worthless, you foul, offensively-sandy peasant!”  Weighing the options, you saved it for another needy: “I’d give you what I hold, but I’m on my way to deliver them.”  Better to upset the edge-of-death stranger than the impatiently-hopeful old chum.  Shaking off the bum was your final delay in getting the goods to a more secluded (hermit-worthy, really) spot to go on holiday.  “Hurry.”  I knew you couldn’t hear me sighing (to ask myself “Awwwww, what’s wrong?!”), but I told myself it would help me breathe more easily, exhaling at the thought of your soft vocal chords, your well-dressed torso, your nearly-bare bottom half.  “No more delays.”  You stomped the tension into the “WELCOME” mat and I ran to the door, trying as hard as I could to make it sound like a walk.  “Get those leftovers into my cold dark room before they spoil all of me at once, undeserving.”  You didn’t have to return to high school for an entire week; “love” is seen in the East as losing validity with each frequent proclamation—that is the only thing that we could make out that week before, when the man from Fukuoka tested our patience, dry-heaving his poor English, directly aimed at our flushed cheeks.  Not to say mine has any trace of wealthy worth, but there is a short and quiet speech that my language had given me the words to plead:  “I will gladly lose my validity for seven, uninterrupted days until I’m sitting in the mouth of the beggar, cursing you, ‘Why can’t you at least have one modicum of ugliness?!’”