wc: 251                       2021

   

        The four of you experienced the sunset from the bluff, a platonic reenactment of middle school forays. Dusk has since crept in with its somber blanket and the four of you, now walking in pairs, have fallen silent. Tree roots unevenly lift the sidewalk, preventing you from walking a straight line in the darkness. Your hand brushes then bumps your friend’s, the one whose offer to play with a crying boy has ripples still. The countless hours imagining worlds and monsters, the vessels of small wood and plastic that turned to late nights on patios where cheeks glowed, and the unbridled truth saw the clouds brighten with the sun. Whose grief when his father passed was shared but rarely witnessed. Whose house you sought on New Year’s, when fear that yours would need a new heart enveloped you. Ripples through here no doubt.  

You gently take his hand, just holding the palm, not interlocking fingers. Surely a joke until his folds back around yours.

You don’t flinch, it’s not that kind of surprise. You look at him, ready to grin, but his blank stare remains down the path. You wonder whose hand he thinks it is, if he knows there’s one at all.

    A humming exists in your arhythmic steps. He has better circulation than you. So soft. There’s a warmth there.

Then a switch clicks and he turns past you, raising and dropping your hand while exclaiming how cold you are, offering to hold the girls’ hands as well.