we were outside and the street was wet and the sign was flickering. i wanted to be barefoot but knew it would be weird so instead i just sort of hovered around you while you smoked and the awnings dripped. it was dark here, the blue darkness of a night that you’re not supposed to be out in, a night that refuses you. not a warm one but our knees were uncovered.
you play with your lighter. we stand under the lamppost. in three months we’ll be going different places as fast as our legs can take us. right now, the summer is too young to have a name. so we stand there. i’m in love with you and i have been since middle school math class.
“doesn’t it bother you,” you ask, and the neon sign flickers, “that your dad says shit like that?”
i put my back against the wet lamppost. you play with your lighter. “does anybody feel good about their dad?” i ask.
you snort. then we’re silent.
once when i was twelve my father threw a plate on the ground and later when he retold the story, he said that i had done it. or that i’d made him. i don’t remember exactly how he lied about it, only that he did, and that it was the moment i’d sort of recognized that he was 50 percent of me as a person and that was fucking terrifying.
the neon sign flickers. you play with the lighter and pass it over your fingertips. and then you say, “there’s a thin layer of molecules that stops me from being burned by this.”
okay. i watch you do it, even though i know i should be stopping you about it. it’s not the kind of night for stopping things. it’s the kind of night when we’re both the bad kind of quiet.
you unfold your free palm and hold it inches above the flame. “the further i get, the less it hurts,” you say.
you don’t look up. you put your lighter in your pocket. we walk in the mist which is the resting state of rain. i feel like we’re too close to an emotion to speak of it, but i know what you’re saying.
“don’t grow a molecule coat too thick you can’t feel warmth,” i say. “don’t go too far away.”
you snort again. “too late.”
i look up. i can’t see the moon. i think of your lighter and the hand i want to hold and how both of us are running before the cement in the ground can take us. i think of how we are both playing with any lighter we find, balancing between the thin layer of dna and personality, of destiny and fate.
“it’s okay,” i say, “who needs fathers anyway.”
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