Rachel Kadinsky

haze, red lips parted just enough to promise trouble, and me with my battered brass Zippo from ’86, hinge still catching like it remembered every heartbreak, grinding the wheel slow till the sooty flame whooshed up wild, orange-blue dancing the old cliche dance, kerosene stinging sweet right in the veins.

she sucked hard on that New York Marlboro, and the cherry crackled alive like a whole goddamn forest going up in hungry flames, the rush pouring down into her lungs the way midnight pours into the soul, and there was Rachel — size 12 blouse clinging like it had given up on fashion, brown curls spilling everywhere, freckles scattered like stars across her Irish cheeks, three copper rings swinging from a chain against ears hidden under big black Sony headphones that kept the world out and the beat in.

she smiled at me, real slow, eyes shining with the smoke and the night, and exhaled a long white ribbon into the warm summer dark, and that cloud hung between us like all the unsaid angels, drifting, drifting, gone.

heat thick as a hand,
red wine and bread on the table,
both of us waiting.