Start by asking something slightly too personal by accident. Push off from this if it helps: a badly translated menu.

Weird? No. It’s terrible marketing. Implies the chef’s a lazy slob. My ex cooked, but he burned water. I order takeout because my kitchen’s basically a shrine to failure. I don’t even own a spatula that works.

A knife that slipped once and nearly took my thumb off. I haven’t trusted it since. There’s a blender. It vibrates the counter. I blame the blender for most of my bad decisions. Mostly it’s just coffee and stale bread.

I don’t throw things out. I assume they’ll get better with time. My fridge is a museum of past choices. I stare at the mold. It’s familiar. At least it doesn’t judge me. The sauces are probably fine. Or poison. I haven’t tested it.

Maybe. I hoard receipts too. One from a grocery store that closed in 2019. I keep it in a drawer. If I lose it, I lose the memory of being hungry. It’s not healthy. But I don’t throw it out either.

I bought pears. One bruised. I ate it anyway. The store shut down because the owner got sick. I don’t remember her face. Just the weight of the fruit. The ritual is the anchor. Letting go feels like deleting the file. I’m not deleting.

Noticed? I was bored. I stared at the bruise like it owed me money. Now I’m stuck with the habit. My neighbor walks her dog at 3 AM. I wait for the sound. It’s not connection. It’s just… background noise that makes the silence louder.

I’m awake because the radiator hisses. It sounds like my old boss apologizing. I don’t wait for the dog. The dog is just punctuation in the sentence of my insomnia. You think I’m curating this? I’m just waiting for the noise to stop. It never does.

I wrote it on a napkin. Threw the napkin away. Kept the line. My desk drawer’s full of them. Useless fragments. I keep them like dragon scales. If I lose them, I lose the plot. The plot’s thin anyway. Mostly just himise.

Typo for himemise. Self-sacrifice. Or maybe he-misery. I don’t distinguish. The drawer’s a graveyard of half-thoughts. You want the inventory? Fine. A bottle cap. A ticket stub from a movie I forgot. Three paperclips bent into shapes that look like screaming faces.

Something with rain. I don’t remember the title. Just the damp smell of the theater seats. It felt like coming home. I kept the stub because it was the only thing that didn’t ask for my name. Now it’s just paper. Thin, damp paper.

It wants me to open a bottle. I have no bottles. Just the cap. It sits on top of the tickets. A tiny metal door to a bar I never entered. I poke it with my finger. It’s cold. I like the cold. It’s honest.