'Four percent' by Sophie Furlong Tighe

After Luke Kennard

 

The thing is, I guess, most parties are really just places where it’s socially acceptable to fall in love. Which isn’t like travelling at all— in fact it is mostly about staying still for as long as humanly possible. I sit on the kitchen counter imagining that John will emerge from the living room, looking for me or some other space to breathe into. I set a timer and decide to wait one minute longer than the average time it would take one person to urinate, taking that that person has had three glasses of sparkling rosé and one cup of hot mulled wine. Two people who have already won the party come into the kitchen and fill tall glasses with water from the tap; too many hands in too many places to nod at the girl staring intently at the growth of time itself. The woman says to the man, I don’t know the sonnets and he sighs, like: Of course, but lets her talk: But I love the passage, the one that goes, then she recites, like really recites, accent and all, she speaks: Alas, a crimson river of warm blood, Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind, Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips… And she keeps going, murmuring on through John’s clumsy entrance, on through his sugar-rimmed kiss, on & on with & through the melody of the timer; all forces of passion playing chicken with the battery on my phone.