I leave a restaurant serving Vietnamese sandwiches after just ordering the pilot and the shrimp papaya. I climb up the steps and stand on the sidewalk. I see a sign for Graffitea. I investigate. I look down. The tea spot is closed. I look up into a window momentarily. A woman turns around. I walk a couple of paces back to the restaurant. I stand for a moment. I feel it on the back of my neck. I turn around and see her leaning out the window, staring at me.
“I wasn’t looking into your window. I was looking at Graffitea,” I say.
“Really?” she says. Amused. Not believing me.
“I promise you, I wasn’t looking into your window,” I say with a nervous smile. Finding some surface-level amusement. Maybe hoping I could get this cleared up. I turn around. Should I tell her I am a student?
“Hey!” she says.
I turn around, and she has her phone in her hand.
“Hey, wha. . .?” I put up my hand to block the camera. I am terrified. She fumbles with her phone and descends back into the apartment. I sit down on the steps of the sandwich shop. I gaze into the sandwich shop. Is this how it ends? Does she have my face? Am I gonna die? Why is it that a simple thing like going to get food and trying to eat healthy spirals into something where I don’t feel safe? Cops could be involved. The server brings out my food.
Nobody believes me.
The most fucked up part.
Her “Really?” subverted my own confidence, my truth.
Her “Really?” violated then me and violates me even now.
I’ll never forget the way she said “Really?” to me.
No one will believe me.
I won’t be able to sleep tonight.
I wanna cry.
Is this where my world collapses under someone else’s reality?
All of my good trauma dissolving into a puddle of blood, broken bones.
Lost appetite. No release.
Every siren makes me quake and shiver.