Maybe I dropped it as I struggle to hold the box of Munchkin donuts and the lukewarm cup of coffee in my hands that I brought for you. Even after you told me not to. Even after you told me you needed space. I watch you, my back barely touching your front door that still hasn’t shut all the way, allowing the last of the summer flies to creep in. You grip your phone against the hard line of your mouth, pacing the hallway between your living room and the kitchen like an ensnared animal. I want to look between my feet, by the front door behind my sweating back, because I know it’s here somewhere, but I can’t take my eyes off of you. Even now, as you continue to act like I don’t exist, even as you’re yelling so loud into your phone CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE that there are specks of spit flying out of your mouth, you still mesmerize me. I hug the donut box closer to my chest, remembering when we used to have sex on your leather couch, our skin sticking together until we collapsed on each other, exhausted, our bodies like burdened tree branches after a heavy snowfall. We would order Chinese and watch the Discovery Channel, documentaries about cruise ships and one that is so enormous it can’t fit into a dock. How there was space inside for cabins the size of houses. A shopping mall and a waterpark amidships. An amusement park with a zoo; rollercoasters and elephants. We laughed, considering how we could live forever on a cruise ship that size, with everything we could ever want, cruising the oceans until there was nowhere left to go.
Hillary Leftwich grew up in Colorado Springs and currently lives in Denver with her son. In her day jobs she has worked as a private investigator, maid, and pinup model. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in NANO Fiction, Dogzplot, Eunoia Review, Progenitor, Monkeybicycle, One Sentence Love Stories with Meg Pokrass, The Citron Review, and WhiskeyPaper. She is the associate editor at The Conium Review and the nonfiction editor at The Fem Lit Mag. Find her on twitter, or not, @HillaryLeftwich.
image: Carabella Sands
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