There were some things he might never take for granted again, like dancing in the kitchen, like talking past small, like holding his breath for shooting stars amid stars. If he could have them just one more time, for one more moment, he might never take them for granted again.
She loved them long, wrapped in arms, at the edge of places you wait for endings and beginnings to end and begin: the top of airport escalators, while planes roared to takeoffs and landings, under signs where buses hissed startings and stoppings, and in dreams, weaved through sleep and waking.
Tonight is not like any other night. Yes, I will meet you there, with a white rose on the seat and a note in my hand. And when I turn the last corner at the hill to your heart, perhaps my good omen will run by, and wish me luck.
I put this road here, painted in charcoals, disappearing in darkness at both ends like a snake in tall grass. I put trees along both sides, compassed with city streetlights, glowing in fog. And then, darling, I put you, driving alone, your dash a carousel of light under arabesque branches.
He kept his heart back for some time, content to give her just an ear, a foot, a mouth. After she whispered sweetly enough, and walked with him far enough, and kissed him quite enough, he’d hand his heart over, trussed in tissue, beating blood, good as yours, fair enough.
It’s a spectral kind of heat that follows orange on yellow, like layers of a sunshine cake, look but don’t touch (there’s danger here). If we’re lucky, the rain protects us with a wall of water we can hide behind and we whistle in the dark, except it’s light out.
I am the storms. I am the scroll of dirty gray sky, the wind throwing leaves and scattering shingles, the pinpricks of rain’s first small drops. I am the wink of lightning through city buildings, the growl of thunder low in the fields, the final flourish of sweet suffocating snow.
Look at him in his black shirt and russet skin, so unsuspecting, so almost-happy. And you see there’s a place in his future he’ll have to go, like being forced through a hole too small, and you can’t wait to see him on the other side, so unsuspecting, so really-happy.
Whenever I can tell you’re lying, whenever you look at me with that face, whenever you leave your hands cold in your lap, I compare you, heartlessly, wrongfully, to those who came before, now a bevy of beauties who surely loved me more than you do, though they did not.
She sat like a queen, spoke like a senator, moved like she played lacrosse all her years. He would perhaps stumble or joke too quickly or laugh too loudly and the moment would be lost. What did they always say? You only have one chance to make a first impression.
When he played that song, no matter where he was, no matter what he was doing, no matter what the clouds looked like, or how the stars sparkled, or how the girls looked at him, or what the sun appeared as—now a giant pink dew drop—he was happy.
The suit soaked in the rain, its pockets filling, its kerchief floating out the fold, its buttons shining wet and new. Now the clouds cleared and the sun baked it dry, leaving its colors faded, its cuffs wrinkled, its lapels drooping lugubriously, just the way it was before it rained.
There wasn’t anything to do now but sit, so sit he did. The sun walked up the blue dome of sky and sent the moon out behind him, the moon with his face now grimacing, now grinning, now solemn and still, the moon with a train of glitter in stars.
There was that dim light, that pale yellow spill from the end of a bulb with a blue straw hat. There was that bright white light of mornings in the kitchen window, the first day of school. And there was that light you could see dark in, dull and gray.
