Spells

On Christmas Eve as teens, we amble Georgetown’s lamplit streets, fingers linked, kissing, your upper lip prickly with that faint mustache some girls get. Your dad is a basement shut-in, a bald guy with myalgia. I had been sipping pink sherry at a gift exchange at my grandpa’s house, my crystal glass prisming the festive fir’s icicle lights into rainbows. Recrossing the tall arch bridge, I scale the patina green parapet rail. The steel chills my fingers as I teeter above the tree crowns, the void of the wide black river. Through those balusters, I ask you if I should do it. Not missing a beat, you snuff your cigarette cherry on my half-numb knuckle and a moment later, faint. I scramble back over and kneel beside you, jostling your limp shoulder. An ambulance slows. Driver says someone phoned in about a jumper. I play dumb and say you fainted. The medic loads you on a stretcher and we pull away as a news van arrives. You come to in a panic, demanding they let us off at the Metro stop. After your dad sends you to an all-girls boarding school on a distant river, we pen each other letters. Yours land in my mailbox, a mauve wax seal on the back flap. God, our paths cross decades after, you having refound religion among snake handlers, spirit talkers.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Number 3. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.