(Written When I Was On a Painful Diet)

 

This is the story of a man who ate many sandwiches – not all at once – over the course of his lifetime, I mean to say. What? You thought he ate them all in one sitting? That is not implied in the title and I am sorry if you have gotten the wrong impression. Look, making that face is not going to make this any easier. I am here, fully prepared, to tell you a nice story about a man, a very interesting man, by the way, who ate many sandwiches and you are giving me an attitude. You know what? Perhaps I shouldn’t even tell you the story of the man who ate many sandwiches, perhaps I should wait until you have calmed down. I am calm. I am fine. You have the issue. No, I am not stalling. My story is complete, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. You do not know what you are missing. The narrative I was to share with you has everything: love, espionage, several small dogs, and, of course, many sandwiches, not to mention the man, a very interesting man, by the way, who ate the sandwiches. Fine, be like that. Don’t read my story. Go read one of those rag-mags at the supermarket. Maybe there’ll be an article about Elvis coming back to life and marrying an alien and moving to Maine to open a dry goods store. But when you a ready to read a fine piece of literature, a tale of a man and a tale of many sandwiches, eaten by said man, I’ll be here, and I’ll be waiting.

 

THE END

Edward Palumbo is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island (1982). His fiction, poems, shorts, and journalism have appeared in numerous periodicals, journals, e-journals and anthologies including Rough Places Plain, Flush Fiction, Tertulia Magazine, Epiphany, The Poet’s Page, Reader’s Digest, Baseball Bard,  Dark Matter, and poemkingdom.com. You can visit his blog at bronzedagain.blogspot.com. Ed’s literary credo is: if you fall off the horse, get right back on the bicycle.