I had seen him many times during the day, in passing, and he was not at all striking. At night he was on fire.
Our eyes grabbed so quickly and it smelled like wet grass. Or moss. To fuck like insects, we did not need language.
I asked him if he felt like a grown up. I prayed he would say no. I did not want him to be human at all.
He fingered me.
“No way, I’m so not,” he said.
I had my period and told him. He said it did not matter in the least.
We were scary and not scary to each other, and more than anything we fit so well. Stuck together every night that summer.
~~
Twenty years later he has googled me and found I am still me and he sounds elated.
We drink coffee and take off our hats. His eyes are the same and it makes me nineteen. My broken face, trying to adjust.
His hair is now frosty tipped but full and glossy. He is too pretty to be straight. I tell him that.
“You have not grown up,” he says.
~~
I suggest we take a walk outside and talk about our real lives. He says no, and then he says, “Okay. It is stuffy in here, isn’t it?”
My lack of domestic skills. I blurt that out.
“What do you miss the most?” I ask.
“Not thinking about what anything means, or how it will turn out,” he says. He is looking in the windows of the homes we pass, gazing into them. Every time he sees a big screen TV he says, "fuck".
"Yep," I say. I know what he means. I hate what screens have done to people's living rooms. They glow blue and bruised.
**
Night - Meg Pokrass (c)
