The Girl with the Duck

I can’t think of anything to write about, so I’m going to write about the girl sitting across from me in this café. It appears to me that she’s trying to hide the fact that she’s got a tattoo on the small of her back. It’s probably a butterfly or a duck, something that once made sense. But I can tell from her body language that it no longer does. Maybe she wants to relegate it to the past, just like the people she used to hang out with, the decisions that she made, the smell of alcohol and the cool of stainless steel on her skin. Maybe she doesn’t want to remember the boyfriend that took her to the tattoo artist, whose stupid idea it was to get matching tattoos. Of course, by now, he’s changed his duck into a bad-ass yellow dragon, so she’s the only one left with a silly duck. But maybe I’m mis-portraying the duck. Maybe it’s not a silly duck after all. Maybe it’s the duck that’s bad-ass and the dragon is silly. Yes, I think that is so. Maybe she likes the duck and is glad for it. Maybe it’s the shirt that she’s uncomfortable about. Yes, I had it all wrong. The tag of her shirt must be irritating her. I thought it was regret I saw on her face, but it was just an itch. She understands that todays stand on yesterdays and that there can be no other way about it. No, there can be no other way. It must be so. It’s a truism. I thought this story would lead to paradox, but no, it’s led to truism. The duck is a truism. And she is happy for it. Sure, why not. How stupid I was to think it might be silly. Think about it. Most everything about that episode has faded to memory – the weekend in Wilmington, the boyfriend, the tequila, the faint scent of tobacco that made a home in each of the tattoo artist’s words, the reaction her friend Susan had back at the dorm. Susan was silly. Susan didn’t get it, not like us, anyway. We’re in the know. You, the reader. Me, the writer. The girl, with the tat. And the Duck. But not Susan. And not the dragon. Definitely not the dragon, which, as we’ve established, is silly. But the Duck is a miracle. The Duck took a girl who was sitting in a café on a Monday in December and made her the hero of this story. That, my friends, is one bad-ass duck.