"Water Bottle" by Lindsey Heatherly
I fill you up after solitary morning coffee and tuck you into the sleeve of my backpack. You ride, tilted, in the car cupholder, never fitting the space quite right. My first two fingers slide into your handle, and you rock as I swing you beside my hips in the parking lot. I place you on display to the left of my computer, directly in front of the phone. The phone rings, and my hand bumps into you as I answer.
At lunch, distracted, I walk halfway to my car before remembering I left you on my desk. You fall toward the floor as I jerk you by the handle, and you crash into my thigh. I toss you into the passenger seat, and you slosh from side to side as I eat canned chili and blink back tears.
Hot car to cool indoors makes condensation, erased with a shake and a sip. You sit in the cart as I transport medication to the machine for filling. I gulp most of you down as the nurse unlocks the med room, and I notice flushed cheeks and messy hair. I conceal you quickly, for food and drinks are prohibited. Just like bathroom rendezvous leaving shirttails untucked and buttons mismatched.
One sip is left for the ride home, so I save you for the swallow just before belting out the same playlist as the day before, year before. A toss back into the passenger seat is short-lived as the one twenty years younger knocks you to the floor.
You balance on top of a heap barely contained within my arms until you teeter and fall onto the kitchen floor, and my arms empty onto the already cluttered dinner table. A few stray droplets fall onto past-due bills and leftover receipts nestled in empty grocery bags.
I refill to the brim and drink a quarter of you dry. Dinner and laundry, dishes and nighttime routines. I say goodnight, and the moment I remove my contacts I curse and shuffle to the kitchen to loop my first two fingers through your handle and drag myself back to bed.
I arrange my pillows and secure the lid before you rest on the bed beside my phone, glasses, the remote, and I sigh, for I know a person would better fit that space. Every space.
Lindsey is a Pushcart nominated writer born and raised in Upstate South Carolina. She has words in X-R-A-Y, Red Fez, Pithead Chapel, and more. When not working, she spends her time at home raising a strong, confident daughter. Find her online at https://r3dwillow.wixsite.com/rydanmardsey or on Twitter: