Lily Valley

Lemon Muffins

How it burns..

You think about him when you cry. He touched you there, deep down there, touched you anywhere, touched like a sunburn. Every color streaked down your legs like poured wine and it is always behind your eyes. Four weeks and it still burns.

In the dark of your room, the end of his cigarette blossomed red in your mouth. The lighter was for candles but it rested on your naked knee with the residue of heat burning on the metal after you had just torched the nicotine and put it to your lips.

There were stars in the sky but it was only midnight, either way they shined through your curtains like dirt stuck to a window. No, it's the streetlights, not stars. Well, there's a few stars.

You couldn't hear cars over the blow of the A.C, but you knew they were there. They'd come rolling through the streets after a few silent minutes. There were probably girls in them. Girls from Connecticut or Texas or Hawaii who had it all ahead of them, they party, they laugh, they aren't upset. They come to life when Stevie Nicks appears on the radio and everything is forever and ever.

The smoke blew out your mouth like a restless fog.

Smoking sounds about right.

You were almost out of cigarettes from the only pack you had. You stole it from him, remember? Fuck, how could you forget? Never.

The wave of the lighter reminds you of his breath. A lot of things remind you of him.

Sucking in that nicotine for the fourth, fifth, time gave you enough time to debrief everything he'd done, everything you'd let him. Then, as the lighter burns against your thigh, you think about the handwritten note. His number. His number that you never called.

He left you with only half but after trying the first one, you just couldn't stop. It felt like another kiss. Then another, then another, then another.

You didn't call Jean the day after. You didn't call him at all.

You drew an idle star in the sinuous smoke as it floated above your head. You wondered if your walls would stain yellow if you kept this up. But it's fine, you're moving soon anyways. If someone were to burst through your door and see you sitting, knees clutched to your chest on the floor and cancer falling down your throat...

It's midnight. 12:04. You have money. The corner store is open. Wanna go?

It closes at 2 a.m. Better leave soon.

You can walk there. It isn't too far.

Go on.

The weather's been in the high eighties for a while, kissing ninety-one or ninety-two each time you think you've caught a break of the heat. It's the kind of summer that stands still and is pushed out by September's wind rather than fading.

The fan is on and it's still warm. Embracing you in a blanket of dizzy heat that even a frosty ice cream cone couldn't soothe.

Night is nice and cool. A silver lining.

Your legs broke out into goosebumps once each limp reached out the window, they felt like new born cacti. It's cool enough to shiver at the abrupt feeling, but it's nothing foreign. Your feet touch the rugged ground and you slide out further, feeling your back getting scraped up by the window sill.

You stand up right and look back through the open mouth of your window, expecting a flashlight to shine in your eyes or the glass be so tampered with that it snitches on you and shatters, waking the whole house, but you've learned, too recently, how much you can get away with.

Your fingers play with a twenty dollar bill as you stand, completely outside and alone. Don't be shy now. Your phone, your money, your (his) cigarettes. You're all set.