“Seems sorta specific,” I say, my hand stretched over my eye to better hide those parts of you that offend.

“So are swans,” you say.

It’s a point worthy of concession, but never that. Instead, I say, “I saw some glass in the yard, broken, reflecting potential. I saw some glass,” I say, “and only part of the bloody futures were you. None of them were me.”

Off comes the skirt. I’d say I like what I see, the way the lines meet, locally and otherwise, but it’s your turn, and you take your time. The walls are thin around us, uninsulated half-considerations. The dust on the equipment shifts to the percussion of the homeless church in the ballroom on the other side of the cinderblocks. It’s old time, over there—that religion—rented, amplified, and ancient. You sway to the dull beat. “I’ve seen faces, before,” you say. “I’ve seen wallet-sized love,” and you turn a slow circle to give me a good sense of what I won’t ever have.

“Desolate,” I say, dropping the pencils from the desk. “Clitter-clatter and none of it is a thing. If you’ve got skin enough to cover your empty, I’ve got teeth enough to see it gone.”

I remember the early you, but there’s no recalling it, here, not now, at least. As naked as we find ourselves through the hours of dispute, I start to think we’ve never met. “Descents like these,” you say, your hands low on my hips, “are better spelled out in shadows than in books.”

When they find us, there won’t be much left to identify. “Husks,” they’ll say.

“Let’s never suppose a they,” you say; to which I say, “What?” mid-thrust and in step with the through-the-wall deliverance.

“They,” you say as I withdraw. “If they’ll be there regardless, I’d rather not give them faces.”

“Of course,” I say, mostly not ignoring as I push toward you.

Dressed and well beyond bloodied, you sit on the culvert as I pace with an unlit cigarette between my fingers. The church is letting out, moving into its cars with its phones to its ears.

“Light it, then,” you say.

I refuse. I’ll keep your smell on me, thank you, and it’s best in the fingertips. The holding’s enough. “No,” I say. “Fuck off, already.”

You don’t fuck off, not then, at least, but I love your face, and I’m not afraid to say it.

When we kiss at the edge of houses, I quietly hope the known issues will move on, move out, or die, and you say, “I know,” hoping for some similarly sad impossibility. “It wouldn’t make anything better, though.”

I’ll be lying if I tell you I’ll drive safely, but I’ll say it, just the same. They’ll find the car near the bus station, burnt clean. You won’t be notified, but you’ll know. You’ll know I lived, this time, that my course was pastward by way of space.

“Light it,” you say, and I do.

It’s good, the smoke. Through my hand, you look like every pair of lips and floating eye I’ve ever loved.

“Who won?” you say.

“You,” I say. “It’s always you.”

The hallelujahs are imagined but appropriate to the ballroom’s spilling contents.

“How do you know?” is your question, your hair moving with the patience of seafloors in the August staleness.

“Because,” I say. “I flinched first.”

If you were smoking, I’d have an easier time knowing the faces of your clocks, and if you swoon you do it standing, like cattle or happy accidents.

“Just try explaining tonight to anybody,” you say, smiling.

“I wouldn’t dare,” I say.

I have a train to catch, anyway. A car. A bus. There’s your hand on mine, just an hour from now, and I can already feel the cold of its absence, up past that. When I reverse it’s all yes and slowly down and now, but it’s a forward facing trap, this thinking, and there you are, walking on. There’s no fixing you in the feed, and the church caravan has disbanded to the corners of its mission field. Only us. No tumbleweeds in these flats. No horses of note.

We kiss, again, and I ask forgiveness. You offer nothing. You offer words, thin and lacking arms.

“Seems sorta specific,” I say, the sky gone yellow through the city noise and the sun’s descent.

“So are swans,” you say, and I’d pay to hate you.

“Sure,” I say, and you call me a liar.

“Sure,” I say, and the wind moves across us, the first we’ve felt in years, the same wind, so differently received.

“Good,” you say, and it is.

Timestamp: 07.03.08 at 10:04 PM. Filed under: Fiction.