Yet another 85 degree
50 plus percent humidity
Oppressive Georgia day.
I sit on the heavy wooden bench
And watch as he approaches,
Slowly,
Head drooping in distress.
His nuclear waste green sunglasses
Hide the tears I know must be there,
Considering he drove 60 miles
From his college campus to mine
For the sole purpose of saying..
“I’m sorry,”
He mumbles, as he collapses more than sits
As far from me as possible
On a bench barely 4 feet long.
He cheated.
I found out.
His murmured apologies surrender
To declared self-accusations
And screamed pointless justifications,
So superficial they feel emptier
Than a high school in July.
Freshmen and graduate students alike stare unabashedly
As some malnourished boy gets punched in the gut
By a girl made of marble,
Or more likely basalt
Considering last night’s eruption.
His pleading can’t permeate my silence until,
Suddenly,
Perfect lips hover over mine.
Familiar yearning slices through the ash.
An inch of space will decide the finale.
To love,
Or not to love?
His sanity sits between us,
Waiting for my answer.
How can I leave him to die on this bench?
His pounding heart jumpstarts me like a car battery,
Every sense I thought numb
Coming alive in an instant.
I lean in.
About the Creator
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More stories from Megan Wells and writers in Poets and other communities.
Reaching Out
I promise her. I'd do anything for her. She's my mom. Even as Lanie and Deanna are flying home, Mom is scrappy fighting dying. She lays too still in that too-big bed with all the toasty white hospital blankets, in the south tower, at the broad end of a long slow-turning corner that delivers me again to her private room with the view she can't see through, with the beeping that tells us nothing new, and all these ice chips she can't swallow, and a flood of well-intentioned nurses who cannot do a damned thing all the same.
By Christy Munson3 days ago in Fiction
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