He was seven, and his fingers were perpetually sticky. When you arrived, Isaiah sprung out and stood quietly.

He put on a Batman costume and hid behind the couch until you came.

You looked like a hamburger fried in a donut. A sin committed and a prayer answered, you said. I wanted to know what I looked like to you. There was still so much to tell you – things too ugly to know or say. ‘I’d burn my life down for you,’ you said. You had a jawline, and I wanted to crawl under your gaze – under your chin. He knew something was wrong, and that’s when I wondered if maybe falling in love looked like a crisis to an observer. The man I had been conditioning was not happy with me. He planned a tour of a haunted house, but I said no. He planned to go ice-skating, but I said no. You messaged that you had left your girlfriend, for me. You messaged me when I was playing slots with the man. I wanted as much of the world as I could take, and I didn’t have the conscience to be ashamed. He was almost jaundiced – he was so sick in love with me. He seemed surprised that I was not fun loving. And that I might need wool socks as well. He seemed offended when I told him I needed a warmer sweater, matching gloves, and that the breakfast we had wasn’t right. He spent the morning calling stalls and asking for rates. We were somewhere mountainous, and it was snowing. I tried to bathe alone and he played a guitar on the other side of the door. I couldn’t enjoy anything without acknowledging he was in the room. He insisted on sleeping in the same bed in our cabin. While I waited, I went on a trip with a man I barely liked. I remember pulling threads, looking in the mirror, and seeing myself how you might see me. My fingers felt swollen with focus and desire. I wore a brown corduroy jacket most days, and I remember waiting to be with you – putting my fingers in the jacket pockets until the pockets couldn’t contain my incessant want. We agreed to talk about it sometime soon. I knew that I was not going to be the same person for loving you. I knew, before I was close to you, that your cotton-blue hoodie smelled like smoke, and I could put my entire body beneath it. I reached out and touched them – they were double mine and whiter. I waited for the right silence and then said flatly that I liked you. You were my teacher, and we discussed my fiction. We started the affair in a small booth at Village Inn. You knew to be excited in proximity to my power. Story is inhuman and beyond me, and I’m not sure you ever recognized that. It’s something on a continuum, so far reaching you know it came from an inhuman place.

It comes from a traditional upbringing and regarding my work as something more sacred than generations of effort or study. I had authority – a thing that people like you haven’t witnessed.

Heart berries mailhot