So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,32
They Beavis and Butt-Head laughed.
Heh. Magic wand. Abraca-effing-dabra. Girrl, he can use his magic wand on me.
That first night, first kiss after the pub closed, Kieran handed her a frosty, pocket-sized bottle of bourbon. They passed it back and forth, draining it in the white winter night. The snow-pink sky was so pretty, it worried her. She ached. She could feel it in her back, the upper muscles of her arms.
What they became: muscle ache and massage, spoon and spoon rest. Relying on one another as much as snowflakes and Narnia lamppost light, helium balloon and string.
“Your hair, it’s like…red clouds,” she said, handing herself over to him—vanishing into the drumming of her bourbon-flickered blood.
Small and High Up
I.
Composing an email to him that I will not send: William, I would save the buttons that come in those tiny plastic bags attached to your new dress shirts. Take pleasure in releasing the pins from the collar and turn it over to unpin the back, hearing the paper crinkle inside. I want to tell William how much I love his ears. They are small and high up. I want to grab them and gently twist like I am opening a can of something. I’d let you take me away from all this. Please. When I’m having an awful day, being in your presence lifts me like a little puff of air that keeps a feather from falling to the floor. I am embarrassed to tell you about the sadness I feel when I consider all the land in every city in every country in every world that is set aside to bury the dead. How the thought of it warms my face as if I’ve just opened the oven door. That heat—fervid, orange-pulsing and stealing breath.
II.
I can see us in California, our future commune house and the farmhouse kitchen where I am soaking the rosemary garlic bread with extra-virgin olive oil. I gather the plum tomatoes we grow in our backyard, hammock them heavy in the hem of my sundress, staining the fabric with rainwater and dirt and rainwater and dirt and rainwater and dirt. I smell my hands before washing the tomatoes under the hard-shh flow of our kitchen sink. Before dropping them into the rolling, bubbling boil to soften and swell before I smash them between my fingers. William smells like cedar and peppermint, William smells like the Santa Anas. I won’t care what anyone says, William will be my king and I will be his little bird. After dinner, I will tie my long hair back with a thick, slick ribbon. He and I will sit on the porch and drink and talk about how full we are. How we ate too much how could we eat that much why do we always do this. His black coffee, my ginger tea and lemon because I am pregnant with his lemon-sized baby and the ginger helps the nausea.
III.
William, let me tell you how I feel (small and high up!) when I look at your cuffed cerulean shirtsleeves, the expensive, slippery-silver watch sliding over your wrist bones. I wonder about alllll of your pale yellow bones and if your father ever fought in a war. I daydream about a time when you will make my entire body feel like an ear, like a fallen eyelash, a fingertip, pointing. I turn on my computer, open a blank email to him. Go stand in front of the refrigerator. Hold a full can of pop to my cheek, to the back of my neck. William, you are so long. So tall. Like a monster, but not scary. I promise if you were my man, I’d let you make every part of me feel like a mouth. William, don’t you want to make me feel like a mouth?
Some Are Dark, Some Are Light, Summer Melts
You are scared of Nick, so you stall and tell him you have to stop by a friend’s house. You tell Nick this friend is going to ride with you to drop Nick off at his place. The friend will sit in the backseat. You know how bad Nick’s temper can be, so you say this gently, touch his shoulder when you tell him the friend is a guy. You’ve dated bad boys before, but Nick isn’t a bad boy he’s a bad guy and those are totally different things to you. You never meant for things to get this far. You should’ve gotten him out of your life the first