Author's Note: For this drabble, I was inspired by Cisneros' short story "Bread." Man, I've really been in a Cisneros mood lately.
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you've spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?
—Mark Renton, Trainspotting
Life in Technicolor
Ramen
We were hungry. We went to a convenience store along the highway we were vagabonding and bought ramen. Filled the motel room. By evening, our whole room smelled of ramen. Miso. Shio. Tonkotsu. Shōyu. Sapporo. Kitakata. Tokyo. Yokohama. Wakayama. Hakata. Kumamoto. Ramen from anywhere and everywhere.
We were children again, laughing and throwing fishcakes at each other, and then we were adults, me feeding him the fishcakes we'd just thrown at each other and then reenacting that scene from the rented Lady and the Tramp. Smell of ramen, taste of ramen and sake on our tongues, Iggy Pop's Lust for Life on the radio loud loud loud because me and him, that's how we like it, loud to cover up our noises in the bed, loud like we've always been, like when we still had a future in Oinari, like before everything with Sasuke and Sai, like if all that muss and fuss hadn't happened.
The view that reminds him, he says, of landscapes Kuroda could paint. And me remembering the Rescue Gaara mission, Chiyo-sama who gave her life to restore his.
That's just how it is. And that's how we fucked. With all his new memories and all my old. Us kissing with that saliva of broth.