Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Memories from just after Christmas

Mist - 298 words
Sarah Van Name

One night in January, when you were driving me home, the mist was so thick that I felt like we were in the middle of one of those cloud tables at the science museum – like if I stretched my hand out the window, I would feel the night condense into dampness on my skin. You were going through the empty airport ten above the speed limit. I could see, in the few breaks in the fog, the smooth black mirror of the runoff lake. The streetlights filtered the air into a warm, sickly glow.

I would have been terrified. I couldn’t see more than a yard in front of the car, and it seemed like we were going so fast, road replacing identical road, alone together in the dark. A daydream cut into my head and dissipated as quickly: lying in the back of your van together, our coats covering us like woolen blankets, waiting out the fog and the winter night in sleep.

That was not the night when you tried to tell me what I was getting into, but it could have been. Most of them followed the same pattern. I was joyful, open and thoughtless, and I understood as best I was able.

The night you tried to tell me, the sky was clear and cold. You mentioned it only once and then fell silent, letting synth riffs and broken taillights cover whatever worries must have been tumbling inside you. That night, the moon was soft as candlelight upon us and bright, as if it was trying to give me something: blessing and curse in equal measure. But I was already lost. I took both of them, the love and the pain, and absorbed them into my bones, like asphalt soaking up heat and rain.

Daydreaming - Kid Sister

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