- Post By: Jason Santo
- Date:
- Category: Uncategorized
Alma was a creature of habit. As such, the early mornings and early evenings of the summer made sense, and she rarely saw the night but for the hint of it at dawn and dusk, the gray before the hazy colors of fire and bruising that birthed her blues. That faded light reminded her of Eloise and Conner. How when they were all sixteen, she would see them run off to – or run back from – the woods behind the barn, and how she followed them some nights, hearing the hurried sound of their breath; Conner grunting and Eloise wincing. And how in the wee hours they would return with wide grins under that blurry sky that seemed to change in small steps from night to morning with each blink, gray everywhere, shadows the same color as the hard shapes of the world. She could still feel the excited air of those summers. The humid dream of possibility that she could smother Conner with a thick pillow one evening while the stars still whirled above and then find Eloise by that crooked tree by the creek waiting, her dress unbuttoned. How Alma wanted to kiss her. How she wished she could get Eloise alone, kiss her and lay on top of her, the heat of her womanhood pushing into Eloise’s own. Grinding, pulling in a fever at her hair, taking her small breasts into Alma’s mouth and hearing those popped breaths and hisses as if she’d become Conner; cries for more right in her ear instead of ten feet away, where both light and sound failed. Alma despised night for how it stole the view of Eloise away, how the incessant crickets drowned with their hunger the sound of Eloise’s lust. Alma too hated the dawn and the dusk. She wanted her blue skies and work and those thoughts of youth to die as Conner had done over and over again in her mind. Yet like him, and Eloise’s love for him, their life and their children, the gray yearning of yesterday lived on. Alma turned away from her own snoring husband and sighed as the world outside her window brightened with each blink. (at Gray)