PRETTY SOON APRIL WILL BE HERE
I am her husband, an accountant, and am talking to my boss about a new client's pregnant teenage daughter. My own wife is sterile and my boss nods and smiles, nods and smiles, and I want to go out on the veranda with my milk and study the city alone. I stop talking and my boss is like a boy in a candy shop with no money, so I excuse myself to the door, close it behind me. Then someone on the sidewalk pisses into the street. His penis looks like a moth's body in the tungsten streetlight and I have never noticed how long our streets are, here, in this city.He tucks himself away into sleek black trousers and looks up at me and waves. I wave back, but there is a moment of tension.
The man on the street stops, stares up at me like I should say something, maybe throw something down to him—how do movie scenes go? —and I want to throw something, so I toss my glass of milk to him. The milk tumbles like a white satin scarf unfurling, guided by the beveled glass given me by my grandmother at my wedding. He catches the glass, and the milk returns to it, a dove tucking in its wings, and I want to fling myself from this balcony, to see if this man can catch me, to become a glass of milk or something perfect spoken in a movie to a lover.
j. m a r c u s w e e k l e y
l u b b o c k , t e x a s
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