Meant to treat, myself, to something decadent and sprawling, a dessert with no boundaries, colors suffused with sweetness that pinched my jaws and sprung tears to my eyes. I want treatment with helpless adoration.

I can’t believe my father is dead. He’s been dead for over thirty years. I was in my early twenties. He was an old man even then.
Now I’m in my fifties. I am not as old as he was, when he did. But I’m lot closer now, than I’ve ever been.

Her eyeglasses fogged as she ran down the path that cut through the park. Along the brook she heard the call of a bird she’d never heard before.
This made her stop. She waited for the bird to call again. When it did, she ran on realizing she’d heard this call before. It sounded like an old friend starting to tell a same story she’d heard before.

It came upon me overnight–this vast aching void that seemed to stretch between my rib cage to my toes and back up again. I thought I needed to burp.

Instead I noticed tears falling. Which felt as relieving as a burp. The tears were for never having brother. My life has been filled with cousins, sisters, nephews,aunts and uncles.

But not brothers. I noticed one appear in my dream, perhaps a miscarriage being from my mother’s previous attempts a pregnancy. He appeared older than me, taller, wiser, with gray around the temples. He told me, while standing in the backyard of my childhood home, between clotheslines flailing with bed sheets, that I needed be so backward looking. “Do not miss me,” he told me a deep voice that seemed at once to lay down the law while lilting toward comfort. “I am here.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Here,” he repeated among the bed sheets.

And as I woke up from my dreams I knew he meant that he was here in my dream.

But I wanted to be in his.

I had no idea about what had happened. I just caught snippets of words like “can’t believe” or “can’t believe it happened to her.” Sometimes I heard “him.” And that was my problem with eavesdropping on stranger’s conversations on a train. I got just enough to remind me of what people are capable of, but not exactly what they are capable of.

Peppering the light was his presence–its own spice that prickled my sense–making me want to sneeze almost.

Almost.

But then, as he drew closer to me, his eyes softened, their focus sharpened. The line of his mouth took on a pronounced border, a span of pink flesh engorged with sensuality, an intelligence in the whole movement. An inevitability that before I had time to realize it, pressed against my lips in a wondrous, warm kiss.

I cannot slip up. And it’s not because anyone would notice. I don’t even think I’d notice. Thank you for noticing.
It was such a small slip-up. But it was noticed I stuttered, thinking I might explain my mistake or just let my words melded into a dribble of incoherencies which some might take as remorse.
As if I had a choice but to how I was acting about being caught I just spit and sputtered as my accusers looked on, shaking their heads.

embankment
concealment
revealment
annulment
reconcilement
happy-ever-after-ment

I don’t want to find out that kitty was the better part of me. That little furry friend was a pain in my ass most days, always underfoot, nagged for me for food and more food.
Yes, I guess she was the better part of me.

I captured this little thing and felt it move in my hand. I wanted to open my hand but knew it would escape. I could only marvel and feel satisfied that I could feel it moving in my hand-but that was all I could. I could only imagined what it really looked like; see it through to fantastical future prizes and accolades at what I had.
But I could not let it go. I could not open my hand and let other see.
It would fly away, that little thing and I worried someone else might catch it. And maybe they would. But they would have my same problem.