(you would change your colors like the leaves in fall/ i was saving up for the long winter/ summers we’d hide out in my car/ when it broke down we didn’t care…)
his arms, wrapped around her, reminded him of how much he missed her. she was fragile, in the way that she could only be when she was sorry. he squoze her tightly—she felt small, as if she’d lost her weight in tears—and it was as if he’d break her, but he took the risk anyway, pressing her deeper into him. she struggled to breathe, but didn’t mind. every breath smelled of him.
later—after the sizing up, the small talk, the rememberings and the orgasms—they made something to eat.
“you’re never truly beautiful unless you’re vulnerable,” he said. she could tell he had been carrying the idea around for a while; she waited for him to unpack the rest of it, but he never did. he just kept breaking off the ends of the asparagus spears, one by one, while she stirred her saucepot. he blinked his eyes, holding something back behind them, along with his need to be right. he knew what he wanted to say, but the new words he was making up still lacked acceptance and understanding.
when she couldn’t take it anymore—the biting of her lip, holding back feelings—her need to be heard and acknowledged, the necessity of having something to contribute to the world conversation won and she said: “sexiness is borne of freedom.” she continued swirling her saucepot, enchanting herself. in her mind she tasted a new word that had never been spoken.
“the weird thing about freedom,” he said, “is that it’s given to us by birth, freely, yet it means nothing if we don’t clasp it and hold on to it and defend it.”
that was what she meant; and to her, it was what she said. she kept stirring. the new word was gone, now mixed with the old. the sauce was red and began to smell like the echoes of old words shouted across people who weren’t listening. she removed it from the fire, but it was too late.
“first loves are overrated,” he said. ”your first love isn’t as important as your last love.”
she didn’t know how that connected with what she had said; the words from her pot had taken her back to another time. perhaps it had always been like this—perhaps the echoes were the past, not the future. as she wondered if she had missed moments, he took the broken ends of the asparagus and tossed them in the garbage. the bag was clean, with nothing in there but last bits of dust and the seal of the ’82 wine bottle she had opened for her sauce. she had obviously cleaned up before he got there, he thought. when she heard his thought, she couldn’t taste the expression behind it—it was so faint and she could never quite distinguish embarrassed appreciation from unearned pride.
she wondered how long it would take the bag to get full. she wondered if she would take it out before then. or if she would ask him to take it out in the morning. maybe she would take it out herself.
her sauce grew cold, thick and loud with the old words. he sprinkled the asparagus and turned on the oven. they would make love again before the preheat cycle, and two more times before they ate.
in the middle of the night, when she awoke with him growing inside of her, she spread and opened and took him in. but she still heard the whispers of the sauce and wondered about the trash.
