Before You Read:
This is a strange one, but it’s not at all serious!
In Dedication to Anyone on a Diet.
I wish you luck. Take it easy!
I’m not an angry person.
Today, I punched a bowl of oatmeal. Let me explain.
Having worked in many kitchens, I’ve seen people throw tantrums over spilled milk: the yelling, smashing, throwing spiel—not how I deal with my problems.
However, the fresh blueberry stains on my carpet tell a different story.
Writing this, it’s 10:27 pm, and I’m sitting at my desk, waiting for my oatmeal to cool. This is the third bowl I’ve made tonight, yet the only one that’s made it this far.
Since cutting my calories, I’ve adapted this weird, pious relationship with food. I’m not religious, but the whole prayer before eating, I get where that comes from now. It comes from peasants who haven’t eaten all day, being bestowed with a food that, to them, is a blessing from the gods.
No joke, the past few days, when I sit down to eat I take a deep, ceremonious breath, and it’s completely involuntary. My food is my art now. Each meal must be a masterpiece.
I’ve been cooking my oatmeal by the stove, stirring it softly as I’d cradle a baby, yet somehow tonight I managed to burn my first oatmeal: a subtle, humble oatmeal that would have been exactly what I needed, just right. I’d been a fool, walked out of the kitchen while it was cooking, with the burner on high.
The second oatmeal was more lavish, to make up for my lost efforts and to mourn the first steaming humble bowl. The second came close.
Oh, the second oatmeal, more than a friend. Hand in hand, I lead it to my bedroom, and, just before having my way with it, I decided to taunt myself, make things just right, make the bed soft and perfect. I set my oatmeal on the nightstand, primped the sheets, and smoothed the blankets.
When I’d finished making our bed, I scooped her up. My perfect oatmeal, with just the right amount of extra. We fell together, into soft bed sheets. Laying, I stared into her bowl, and just before I began to eat, I noticed a coating of pet hair, lining the surface—normally a very manageable, tonight this drove me wild.
She was my Mona Lisa, my beauty, my perfection, my passion, my moon and sky, my constellation—and in oversight I’d tarnished her.
When something you love, something so perfect, changes, you’ve passed a point of no return.
Still, I tried.
“No. . . no,” I’d said.
“. . . please.”
It was too late. She was no longer warm for me, and too much was wrong for any chance at undoing. Maybe my expectations were too high of her. Maybe I’d let myself down. In any case, it was growing dark outside.
In a hurricane, my grief turned to fumigating hatred, revile. She’d wronged me. She’d changed.
I clutched her in my hand—a frail piece fallen mercy to a demi-God—and laid my fist into her innards. She splattered, erupted everywhere, and left stained the floor, and my heart, and my memory.
I sit, alone, with a third bowl of oatmeal that was never meant to be mine; it will never live up to my beauty, my Marissa.
She rests now, in a safer place, one where none can hurt her.
And leaves me dry, the carcass of what once was.
Rest now, Marissa, and drift into the sea.
Noah Chase, “Oatmeal Marissa” 5/18/2019, 10:54 pm.