your fortune cookies tell the truth, sir.

There are lots of things I don't know about that hang over my head like empty fortune cookies sitting over the remains of my Americanized lo mein noodles.  You're on the other side of the table picking away at the last of your rice, lifting them up to your lips one by one, like the way that you're not supposed to.  I decide that I don't know how many notches there are in your spine when you sit huddled at the far side of the bed, basking in the grayish glow of the cloudy morning light, knees draw to your chest and back hunched over, smoking your cigarettes.  So I count them one night as you're brushing your teeth, running my fingers down the lumps of your back. 1

One, two, three... 2

I don't dare to touch you in the mornings, when you're perched like that, half sleeping and half falling off of our little disarrayed island.  You stare at the cracked television screen as you puff away like a chimney as I follow the smoke as it seeps into the chipped plaster of the ceiling.  You look angry, with the dark circles stenciling bruises under the tiny lashes, clumped together with cheap mascara. 3

Four, five, six... 4

I touched you once, though that time it was trying to count your ribs, and you turned and gave me a look, the same look my parents give me when they see me strolling home in my holey jeans.  It's the same look I get from the employers that tell me that the interview is over before it even begins.  I figured that it was a woman thing until I remembered that Abigail loved it in the mornings, right before I made toast in our molding kitchen and washed it down with spoiling milk. 5

Seven, eight... 6

There are a lot of things I don't know about, I think as I ask the waiter for another fortune cookie.  He smiles at me with his slits of eyes and goes to fetch another before I start muttering about illegal immigration. 7

Nine. 8

My second one reads:  'there are a lot of things you don't know about.'9