Breakfast

I tell My Specific Person I’m doing much better now. “I’m in therapy, 

and I’m eating all of my meals.” I make sure to say the meals thing 

specifically for him because he’s always bitching at me about this 

thing called breakfast. He acts like breakfast will solve all my life 

problems. It’s annoying to me that the breakfast thing does seem 

to work. “What drugs does your therapist have you on?” he asks. 

Breakfast, I think. As if I would follow through with a thing like taking 

drugs when it’s taken me two years to come around to the idea of 

breakfast. I don’t like being told what to do. “I can’t even hold down 

a job for more than a few months,” I explain. I always get pissed off 

at any minor inconvenience and quit. Plus, I can’t have a job when 

I’m subletting. “What makes you think I would follow through with 

taking drugs?” My Specific Person points out that taking drugs might 

help with the following through and job stuff. I make a really bitchy 

face and ignore him. I wonder if My Specific Person knows he is 

My Specific Person, since I’m being such a raging cunt to him all 

the time. This is the first time we’ve spoken in four months. The only 

thing I seem to be consistent about is being inconsistent with him. 

He’s always quite nice whenever I randomly reappear. I find that 

really annoying as well. I don’t know why he even bothers to show 

up. Why be around someone who treats you so poorly? It makes me 

think something is wrong with him. “I don’t need any drugs because 

nothing’s wrong with me,” I tell him. And then I feel like something’s 

wrong with me. My Specific Person asks why I’ve never tried travel 

writing because I don’t seem to get sick of traveling or writing. But I 

mean, yeah. That’d be cool. I just don’t think there’s any money in 

travel writing. Plus, don’t travel writers stay in hotels? Don’t travel 

writers actually do travel activities? I don’t think anyone wants to 

hear about subletting in Berlin and eating nothing but 0,90€ Edeka 

brötchen. I don’t think anyone wants to hear about how I spent the 

entire month crying because My Specific Person didn’t text me back 

when I wasn’t texting him first. I don’t think anyone wants to hear 

about scrawling out 16 incomprehensible pages in a journal, trying 

to figure out the meaning behind two words he said. One time, 

My Specific Person told me I looked nice. One time, he told me he 

likes clowns. I sat there trying to figure out why he’d bring up clowns 

so out of the blue like that until he pulled me into a hug and said, 

“That means I like you, Clown.” I know My Specific Person is a 

fucking liar because I remember every single word he’s ever said. 

The things he says don’t always add up. At least, not the way it works 

in my head. Like, one time he said he was away on tour. But when 

I asked him about the tour 20 minutes later, he said, “What tour?” I 

have blocked him on every single account where it is possible to 

block, except my email and burner account. I always wish he would 

email, but he never does. It’s like he thinks I don’t want to hear from 

him when I so obviously do. That’s why I block him on everything. I 

use the burner account to see what he was doing while we weren’t 

speaking. He was in Singapore with some other girl. Okay, he was in 

Singapore, and some other girl commented on his post. I can’t even 

be mad about it because I wasn’t talking to him then! But maybe I 

can. You know, it’s weird because I have been using this pen every 

morning when I am journaling. It’s from Malaysia Airlines. This whole 

time, I have been wondering where I got it because I’ve never been 

to Malaysia. My Specific Person has been to Malaysia a bunch of 

different times. Isn’t that close to Singapore? What if I borrowed the 

pen from him? What if My Specific Person had a secret girlfriend in 

Singapore all along? I take the pen apart and smash each piece with 

a hammer on my countertop. It makes a big mess of ink and plastic 

and all the broken bits. Why has My Specific Person been to 

Singapore so many times but never to New York to see me? 

Probably because I’m not even fucking here. 

Kassie Rene is a writer currently based in London. Her work has been featured in Hobart Pulp, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere.