There was a girl with beautifully sculpted eyebrows who worked at the neighborhood donut shop. It wasn't love because I didn't really know anything about her: she lived alone in a sad Missouri town, sold knives door-to-door on weekends, and drove a 1986 Dodge Omni. That's practically nothing.
Certain days, I walked to the shop right as she was closing up. While she talked, I held the thirty-gallon trash bag for her to dump that day's donuts in. The pieces of her life that she shared were sweeter to me than all of that wasted icing — like that her favorite thing on rainy nights was to climb atop her trailer home and lie so the falling water in her face felt like being propelled skyward, to the clouds.
One night she invited me to her place. I was fifteen and had no car. We clattered along rural roads in incomprehensible darkness until turning up her long gravel drive, then there it was: her boxy hideaway in the weedy field. Inside were stacks of Dickinson and Plath, a saggy couch, some records, and a tidy kitchenette where she made us herbal tea and smiled at my earnest attention. I silently hoped for rain.
She gave me a blanket but my rest on the couch was fitful. After what felt like hours she called from the bedroom, a soft voice, somehow pained. I went, unsure, and held her. This was all that she wanted. “You’re safe,” she murmured. It didn't occur to me, the number of meanings this could have.
In the insect-riddled morning she took me back. A lingering hug, after which she shrank into herself and disappeared from my life as quietly as she entered it.
Certain days, I walked to the shop right as she was closing up. While she talked, I held the thirty-gallon trash bag for her to dump that day's donuts in. The pieces of her life that she shared were sweeter to me than all of that wasted icing — like that her favorite thing on rainy nights was to climb atop her trailer home and lie so the falling water in her face felt like being propelled skyward, to the clouds.
One night she invited me to her place. I was fifteen and had no car. We clattered along rural roads in incomprehensible darkness until turning up her long gravel drive, then there it was: her boxy hideaway in the weedy field. Inside were stacks of Dickinson and Plath, a saggy couch, some records, and a tidy kitchenette where she made us herbal tea and smiled at my earnest attention. I silently hoped for rain.
She gave me a blanket but my rest on the couch was fitful. After what felt like hours she called from the bedroom, a soft voice, somehow pained. I went, unsure, and held her. This was all that she wanted. “You’re safe,” she murmured. It didn't occur to me, the number of meanings this could have.
In the insect-riddled morning she took me back. A lingering hug, after which she shrank into herself and disappeared from my life as quietly as she entered it.
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