Like watermelon. Like horchata and bat-crack and thick night air.
Like Claire on our walk, too tired: “The moon wants to carry me, but he’s too far away.”
T calling to tell me to look at the moon. So many sweet moon things.
Post-dance declaration of love (in the cold). The six-year effort to requite it.
Brother cats who curl up in each other’s soft arms, looking mildly embarrassed when you walk in on them. Trotsky’s muffin paw on my manuscript, face, mouth.
The final few months before boys became a constant theme of our narratives. Silly craft projects: tank tops with too many beads; floral flip-flops we made ourselves and wore with pride. A simplicity and pureness of friendship to which it takes far too long to return.
A stolen key from a broken piano.
Fruit buffet after Megan is gone. Self-soothing healthy gorging.
The duck fuzz slowly growing back on Dad’s pale head.
Both nice memories of Grandma: offering to cut my PBJ into a heart shape, like on the commercial; taking it literally the day I learned “we all scream for ice cream.”
Like someone taking the dumbest job for me, selling the un-English-major-iest of wares to be near me.
Like being walked to class, and like freshman dance, the first time a straight boy asked me to dance really. Like dancing slow to a fast song playing coming too low from someone’s boombox they brought from home, in a too-lit industrial-ugly cafeteria. In the next moment his friend will tell him a lie about me, and he will not speak to me for the rest of high school. But it is then and was now so sweet.
photo by miss vichon
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