All of summer was encapsulated in the magic of those five hot muggy cicada-blaring days that we huffed from spray paint cans turned gravity on and off with the flip of a switch how you sucked the air out of the world each time we kissed climbing onto the roof of the old school by way of the white pine during lightning storms drank beer in the basements of acquaintances we’ve long since forgotten stared for hours at fish tanks in the pet stores made promises in the dark sweet as marzipan in the car wash swallowed up by large flaps of blue kelp covered in suds and whenever we were separated I only thought of you I felt you on my skin like the oil layer from the retention pond I swam in with my friends after wondrous breathless hours staying up all night with not a word not a slice of skin not a drop of time wasted between us listening to the birds chirping before the daylight broke falling asleep against the slowly cooling bedsheets after you’d left while the unemotional song of neighborhood lawnmowers came to life and I began to think in a foreign tongue like I had a miraculous stroke I started to see beauty in all the things around which I’d always seen only an aura of sadness the days were filled with endless roads that all looked the same but we didn’t care driving on the highway with a flat tire to get where we needed to go high on computer duster broken A/C so we stuck to the seats and each other which we secretly loved watched the sun set over strip malls a drama unfurling across a sky so far out of reach with alternate histories we wrote in the newborn clouds and on our last day I didn’t see you until the sun had long disappeared down the drain we met at the carnival each weaving an invisible pattern through the crowd of impossible human shapes and whirring lights and noises until our eyes met at the same time and you jumped into my arms Ferris wheel orbiting in the backdrop like a phantom satellite and I kissed you with the absence of sound with the absence of time weightless only you and me and some small but vital part of me never left that perfect snow globe moment because I had foresight because my heart was so close to detonating.

Eliot S. Ku is a physician who lives in New Mexico with his wife and two children. His writing has appeared in Whiskey Tit, Maudlin House, Carmen et Error, Vlad Mag, and Unlikely Stories, among other places. His writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize.

You can read more at www.eliotsku.com