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ᴹᵃʸ ¹³ᵗʰ? ¹⁹⁸⁷
ᴅᴀɪꜱʏ ᴅᴏᴇꜱɴ'ᴛ ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ.
When she shuts her eyes, she's waking up. She's always well rested but the lack of imagery throughout her night's sleep is borderline depressing. Daisy wants to dream of worlds she's never been to, lovers she's never had, and songs she's never danced to. Daisy wants to see colors that aren't monochromatic when her eyelids flutter down. "At least you won't ever have to worry about nightmares, eh?" Johnny would say with the kind of optimism she dreaded. Never once did it help. She would rather be afraid than feel or see nothing at all.
When she awakes the next morning, Johnny is flipping bacon in a skillet and humming a tune she recognizes more than any other. He never sung the words, only the melody, but Daisy often filled in the missing pieces for him. It was the one thing she remembered religiously, without fail. Johnny found this to be both humorous and concerning in ways Daisy couldn't understand, but he never went into detail. Johnny claims to seldom preoccupy his mind with consternations. "Unwarranted stress? Not for me, D."
"But I know we'll meet again," Daisy harmonizes, treading lightly with her approach, unsure whether he looked past yesterday's quarrel or was still bent out of shape over it. Grease pops and leaves behind dribbles of oil down his wife beater, the one he only wore during sweaty afternoons and nights at the abattoir. She despised his work, especially when he came home with crud under his fingernails and blotches of blood along his knuckles and brow. She would demand for him to shower instantly and he would do so without a word, not having to argue the fact that he was, of course, already planning too. Daisy would tug her shirt over her nose and wait for the odor of iron to vanish. It never did.
"Some sunny day."
Johnny's cheeks raise and he nudges her with one of his elbows as she goes behind him to grab the paper. The print is superficially smeared with bacon grease and coffee, the comic section folded down and flagged for Daisy once she was done skimming through the chaos of daily news. The header, underlined in blue pen, a sub rosa that could only be traced back to Johnny, reads: 𝙻𝙸𝚅𝙴𝙷𝙴𝙰𝚁𝚃𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙽𝚂𝙿𝙻𝙰𝙽𝚃𝙸𝙽𝙱𝙰𝙻𝚃𝙸𝙼𝙾𝚁𝙴. Daisy wiggles her nose and draws pumpkins along the margins, feigning interest in a world she was out of touch with. So much occurred outside of the rural constraints of Renwick. She ached to do more than read about it.
"Crazy, isn't it? We're making leaps and bounds in the world of technology and medicine. Robert Zemeckis may be onto something."
Johnny sets a paper plate atop the newspaper, bringing Daisy's attention to cooked egg yolks and buttered toast. She could use her hands to eat, utensils and etiquette were senseless constructs. She was so hungry. Who knew anticipation could burn so many calories?
