The cold air cradles my breath violently. My pallid face is dry. Hand grenades take shape of half-pint chocolate milks. Lobbed from the elementary school playground over high chain-link fences, they explode muddy shrapnel, speckling my Hamlet suit. Wind streams carry their laughter even on grey days without a smirk from our infant star.
Daydreaming in grandeur: narrow stone roads, meandering Irish hills, littered with sheep, old faces, our breath thick with stout. I notice my smile in your gasoline shades. Pearls tucked behind a ruby pucker.
Awake. I scoop broken cartons leaking sweet, brown milk pulped full of frozen fragments, and toss them in an empty bin. The fresh milk stains spread into thin puddles on the chewed blacktop, filling shallow cracks like a smear of Nivea over broken lips. The puddles appear to blossom obscure faces, and hands reaching toward my faded black oxfords. Muddy voices stifled on the frozen pavement, palms upward with tributary fingers. I feel indifferent, and step over their muffled beckoning, and longing limbs outstretched, perhaps groping for an unknown need: a primeval desire to feel the warm touch of skin, like a child yearning for a listless parent.
Innately compelled, I glance over my shoulder to observe the spill, and address their unkempt bodies.
“It was the children that birthed you,” with a selfish furrow of my brow, feeling comforted by a chill on the left side of my neck just below the ear. “You are THEIR responsibility, not mine,” getting louder. The sensation in my neck lingers.
Their reaching has ceased, as smiles sink into the jagged, black surface. Holding onto themselves, wide eyes close, and they dissolve into one another. My breathing has slowed, but my concern has grown. I drop to my knees, and run my hands through their soaked remnants. A silky grit over my knuckles reeks of lost potential.
No response. My eyes blur with salty deposits and the pulse thumping in my throat has an unfamiliar arrhythmia. I attempt to drink them, but all I taste is chipped asphalt between minute dashes of Grade A. Too much neglect, and never enough time to rectify my inconsistency.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Please, do not be upset,” pleading with the form. I close my eyes slowly with a heavy sense of loss. A moist pair of earthy lips meets mine with precise care. Breathing heavily through my nose, the chocolaty fumes invade with a calming relief. Our brazen kiss ends tenderly, and undressing my lids, the murky mouth whispers “thank you” inaudibly, but content, then dissipates into a chaotic sprawl on the uneven driveway. Upright, I stretch my wet palms to a lighted sky, the unadulterated rays cleanse my dirty countenance, still tasting all that was our suspended moment.
