I watched a red BIC bobble up and down for hours. I bet it was the only pen he had in glove compartment of his dust-encrusted Chevy Cobalt, hidden as a lemon among his pride of cigarettes. Most people avoid the glare of red pens at all costs, but he was the kind of guy who couldn’t think two steps ahead, the kind who bought cereal but forgot the milk. He must have accidentally swiped the pen after signing a receipt, too absentminded to remember the limitations of his property, which probably consisted of a few beer bottles and a some hand-me-down suits.

He’d been scribbling for so long that the beige envelope was starting to rot into the table, growing roots with each punctuated bleed from the pen. It was clearly an apology card. Beige sentiments are those too delicate to handle a real hue, too uneasy for the frothy pastels of graduations and anniversaries. He probably forgot his daughter’s birthday for a poker tournament, or something potentially worse. He looks like he could have been imprisoned for something — he’s too meek for murder, but definitely a felony. Petty robbery or some crime like that. Nothing a card would erase.

He was married; at least the band gave a rather convincing argument. Was the card for his wife? I bet it wasn’t. No one writes long letters to their spouse after they no longer need to, after they have already been pursued, promised, and processed. Marriage is just like that journal you started when you were twelve. The first few days are all dutifully recorded, preserved with puerile similes and purple pens. After about a week, you figure out that there really is nothing newsworthy in your life. Everything is pretty fucking empty, and no one really cares about what happened between Suzie and Jimmy at the ice cream social, or how amazing your night making friendship bracelets was.

He quoted the Bible, slightly too careful with the pages. It must have been new, because the cover kept springing back, persistently begging to be left alone. Maybe he owned it, filed it under his seat in the Cobalt. But I bet he was just another man who lost religion about the time when he was supposed to find it, a guy who never learned Bible verses, and instead drowned his mind in pick-up lines and whiskey sours. He probably just took the Bible from the racks to have some filler for the card. How pathetic.
Godless. Publicly married. Criminally charged. Drunken. What else could he be?

I know it it’s fact. I once bought a card to say sorry. Now I just sit here and watch people attempt to find their feelings, getting a rush out of knowing that others still have something to say. I like to know that every day, there’s another guy who will join me on the other side — crumbled, alone, and coated in flat beige. People think they will never give up, and that’s why they buy the cards, write the songs, make the apologies, and do all sorts of other stupid emotional shit. Truth is, most of us end up creased on the couch, unshaven and glossy from the glare of late night on our televisions.

Someone should really make a card for us, and watch how no one cares about a folded piece of paper and some scribbled verses.