{"id":668,"date":"2007-02-13T09:46:33","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T09:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/breakfast-shopping-sleep\/"},"modified":"2007-02-13T10:31:26","modified_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:31:26","slug":"breakfast-shopping-sleep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/breakfast-shopping-sleep\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakfast, Shopping, Sleep"},"content":{"rendered":"

1<\/p>\n

i said i wanted to be cremated
\nshe said “are you ready to order”
\ni said “yes”
\nshe looked at me
\ni said “what”
\nshe asked me what i wanted to eat
\ni thought it was nice of her to ask, that maybe she cared deeply about my nutrition
\ni flipped the menu over three times and moved my eyes in different directions to indicate i was deciding
\ni asked about pancakes
\nshe said something and smiled
\ni didn’t have a clue what she said
\ni have bad hearing
\nalso i was thinking about ducks
\ni ignored her and asked about the grits
\nshe kind of hated me
\ni tried to keep myself from developing unrealistic romantic expectations
\ni wanted to say something about her t-shirt
\ni wanted to divorce her after seven years of better than average marriage
\ni wanted to watch episodes of six feet under with her and make fun of ultimate frisbee<\/p>\n

i ordered french toast <\/p>\n

she refilled my coffee four times, twice with a slight smirk, once while talking to another
\n waitress, and once while saying “flannery o’connor, huh?” after looking at the book i had
\n next to me
\ni wished it had been kate chopin
\ni hoped she thought i was a feminist <\/p>\n

i watched someone walk up to the jukebox <\/p>\n

she handed me my check and said something detached and sarcastic about the music
\ni smiled
\nprobably a symptom of politeness
\nor a highly unstable and transient moment of euphoria like one of those periodic table
\n elements created by scientists that can only exist in laboratory conditions for .03 seconds
\ni thought, “this is life, i am happy, even though i just ate food that will probably lead to heart disease and kill me when i am forty-seven, what can you do, i have DVDs and carpet, i cannot be justifiably sad” <\/p>\n

i thought about trying to say something funny and make her fall in love with me
\nshe was already gone from my table
\ni felt relief and left ten bucks next to the syrup
\ni was happy because i had existed for twenty-three years
\nthe likelihood of existing at least for another couple of days was pretty good<\/p>\n

i walked outside away from her
\ninto the cold where i could move around and stay awake
\nand feel all the brains and caffeine mixing inside my head <\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

i left you in the garden section at Wal-Mart
\nit didn’t last
\nyou found me next to the ceiling fans and light bulbs
\ni said “it is a good thing these faces that we have”
\nyou said “you are drunk”
\nyou smelled like fertilizer
\nyour foot came close to my foot
\ni thought of ways to ignore you or change the subject in case you touched me
\nit wasn’t true what i said about faces
\na can of coke for 35 cents
\nthat is a good thing
\nand watching you try not to look at the crippled woman who examined our receipt as we left the store<\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

i cannot fall asleep on my chest
\ni feel my heart against the mattress and remember that it is beating
\ni am afraid i will feel it stop
\ni am afraid that when it stops i will not know what to do
\nexcept keep trying to fall asleep<\/p>\n

it is better to lie on my back
\nand forget i am constantly living
\nthat i am something that dies<\/p>\n

danielspinks.jpg
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nDaniel Spinks<\/b> has existed since 1984. He lives in Athens, Georgia with his iPod.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"danielspinks.jpg\" i thought about trying to say something funny and make her fall in love with me
\nshe was already gone from my table
\ni felt relief and left ten bucks next to the syrup
\ni was happy because i had existed for twenty-three years
\nthe likelihood of existing at least for another couple of days was pretty good<\/p>\n

\nBy Daniel Spinks<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}