Small Joys

by Elvin James Mensah

After Finlay had driven me home that evening, I stood in the bathroom watching my reflection; the glass was all peppered with water spots and paste marks. The flat was so silent that it amplified the sound of the tap dripping, of my breathing, of the hum of the heater. Whenever the anger I felt from having seen Muddy in that state began to wane, I’d blink and see him lying there, all beaten and bloodied, and the anger would flare up again. I scanned my face carefully, attempting to understand once and for all what it was about me that dispensed so much misfortune; why did the people who associated with me seem to suffer? Was it something I could physically remove? Did I have to pray it away? I really had been a weed: strangling the healthy plants that surrounded me. It wasn’t enough to simply wish happiness upon my friends, perhaps I needed to go away; maybe, at the end of the day, happiness and I were simply incompatible. I couldn’t be trusted to be there for Muddy the way he had been for me. The longer I stood there, the more I felt my world being punted off its axis, the more I felt these new things that I’d welcomed into my life, to make it better, slip out of place, sliding down their shelves and shattering to pieces; I was never meant to have these things, I realized: friends and optimism and therapy, none of it. There was a reason for my loneliness and, in the end, no matter how far I veered away from this place, life always brought me back; it might’ve looked diffe...