Cloud 10,
that's where my heart is. Cloud 9 is for amateurs. When the Ferris wheel begins to slow, and cradle rocks to a stop to let on new passengers, we're at 12 o'clock exactly. You say I can see your house, you need to mow your yard loser –– which you can't because I live across state and am just visiting for the weekend. We're making long distance work we think. Months from now, when we count backwards, we'll know you were pregnant that night. We can look out over the whole fair and beyond; the beach sings up the sound of the surf. Your lips are snow cone blue and you're laughing, putting sticky blue kisses on my cheek; the stars feel so close we imagine we can blow them away. The way you're sitting, face turned to me, the full moon seems a halo just behind your funky frizzy hair. In that moment, I feel you the way I feel the ocean: all at once and overwhelming. When I reach out to touch your cheek, you bite my hand and push it down into your pants. "Get me off before we get down." Even when we're back on the ground, for weeks I'll feel like I can reach up and touch the stars. Months from now, you'll become a blue line that runs through my life, runs from our bed down to the beach where we found your clothes, down into the ocean where it ends, tethered to you somewhere, suspended in the dark; a god looking up at me, instead of down. She was just born sick. It wasn't anyone's fault.
Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX His flash and micro writing in lovely places like Wigleaf, Bending Genres, Does it Have Pockets? HAD and is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel. Read him in Best Small Fictions 2017, 2019 and at www.keithawoodruff.com. He was awarded a 2018 Pushcart Prize. @keithwoodruff.bsky.social
No comments:
Post a Comment