Sam Ruddick - Long-term Relationship

Sam Ruddick

Long-term Relationship

I worry about zombies. Women find this endearing at first, because they think I’m kidding, but when I was in South Africa I saw things that seemed like good ideas: barbed wire around kindergartens, twelve-foot concrete walls with metal spikes atop them around single family homes. Try to talk about this on your third date. See where it gets you. She’ll laugh, tap the ashes from the tip of her cigarette, and her bracelet will catch the light just right. “You’re funny,” she’ll say, and since it’s only your third date, you let her think that, but the truth is that you never know when it’s going to happen. All you know is, if you have plenty of canned food and bottled water and you can keep them from getting in, you can ride it out. Eventually, they’ll starve. And then you can go outside, start living again.

You’d hope we could get the ballet going, again. That’s one thing the women I date seem to like. But afterwards, when I start talking about the plans we need to make, just in case, they tell me the joke’s getting old. I have to assure them that it’s no joke, that we need to prepare, and soon after that they stop returning my calls. But I know one day they’ll come knocking at my door again, and as much as I wish I could, I won’t be able to let them in, because while they may have been attractive at one time, and I may have enjoyed them at the ballet, or in the bed, or in a conversation about Ezra Pound, the fact of the matter is that it’s too late for all that now.

Sam Ruddick’s work has been printed in SlugFest,Ltd., Phoebe, Pangolin Papers, The Listening Eye, Axe Factory, Santa Clara Review, and Voix du Vieux, as well as online at pindeldyboz.com.