Himalayan

This is a snapshot into a world I’m trying to understand, y’all — for realz!

It needed salt. Looking up, he realized the shaker was at her end. It felt intentional. She rarely used salt. It made her bloat. It sat there just out of his reach. She’d insisted on the pink Himalayan. He would have been fine with regular Morton’s Salt. He‘d been raised on that black paper cylinder with the girl in the yellow dress. Had they changed the logo. Probably. Everything he loved was being changed.

He felt constantly under attack by about everything. There was little he could do or say that wouldn’t make him a target of someone’s anger. Today was no different. It wasn’t the first time he’d expressed his opinion about that subject. In the past she would have agreed with him. Ever since those kids went out in the street breaking things she’s become a civil rights activist. They didn’t even have black friends.

He sat before a plate of organic vegetables, and gluten free pasta, in a sauce that wanted so desperately to be cheese but was not. It needed salt, any kind of salt would do, but he didn’t dare lift his vice to ask her for it. She would take it personally and things had just started to feel peaceful. She actually looked pleased. She was proud of her cooking. She normally would have been giving herself compliments or tossing him hooks to get him to praise whatever she’d made. It was always unrecognizable to him. It was always a name he could not pronounce.

She barely made a sound as she ate in silence. She was meditating. Watching her eat made burned, so he let his eyes fall back on his plate. He could feel hot tears building up and that gave him hope as at least he’d have salt in his food. The first of them fell on his fork as he brought it to his mouth. He chewed slowly and swallowed trying to keep as still as possible.