by the milk of the sun

Montréal keeps her eyes open at night, scours the city for signs of life or love. My hands and feet are numb in the wake  of the biggest snowstorm. I hid in the car hands covered mouth shut waited for you to come around. But instead I caught wind of a song, quiet and slow. Quiet and slow like your words whispered under cover of darkness. Your hands fumble on their way to mine, gentle and hesitant.  My eyes are open and I absorb every last detail, from the position of the stars to the position of the freckles on your face. I am bathed in a frost that will melt in the morning  when the soft sorry earth cannot hold the weight of our feet. Next day, Montréal has proposed and I cannot deny her. She is warmth, spring in her jeans unconditional love, but you are everything.

Montréal, you are a fool. I first felt you  beating against my heart, enveloped in the dry, callous language of Hemingway, chaffing our elbows. we would mock him, laugh in his face tell him that he had no vision of youth or godlessness or sexual frustration. Jake Barnes couldn’t touch us. and then it was an avalanche--                    a cannonball--                                a rolling thunder--           sparks emanating from our fingertips. you and I? we were gods in the grandest sense of the word. when the paint began to chip in my apartment, you came over and scratched pictures into it,  planted flowers and shrubs all in front of the brown  spots. We were always together in February,  when the air was raw enough to penetrate our bones and render us                               motionless on the side of the street. you were warm, light, love huddled against me and we could sit through the worst of the  snowstorms --sitting, watching, knowing nothing but the comfortable heat of your face against mine and the incessant scratch of literature against my thigh.

one summer you skipped the gap and slipped right into thirteen-- it fit you like an old pair of jeans. i hold in my mind the hot nights of july, you and i laying under my open window, counting grasshopper chirps and the freckles poised on the bridge of your nose. you explained everything 10-year-old me could ever need to know, like what it means to bleed between your hips and the feeling of lips on lips why should you ever want to marry. my arms grew to match yours, and i  wished each day that my body would follow suit. i did not want to be older, i just wanted to be you. once you showed me the scar on your leg and you said, "don't you ever think they can tell you what to do." i traced it with my fingertip, from your thigh all the way up in curves to your hipbone, jutting up like a mountain, proclaiming your strength. i imagined myself as you, taking the threat of the knife over his unyeilding desire. i needed you  as me. then you were absent for three summers, and i started to bleed without you. when i had to tell my mother, my face lit up with shame. i knew she didn't feel it like you did. my legs grew out to match yours, but i couldn't remember their shape. as soon as i forgot the position of the freckles on your face, the phone rang. my father held it to his ear for three silent minutes before letting it drop between the cushions. i thought surely my blood would stop cold, that i would no longer grow, but remain as you would for the rest of my life. sixteen. it made no sense that i would get that far. then 500 miles pass and i am standing over your body. i can see mountain ranges under the thin cloth of your dress, the look on your face when he stopped his car with a lurch, leaned over to you. i put my head down, adjust the hem of my skirt over my legs. and even after that, after they tossed your ashes across Maine's frigid coast, i could feel you every day, a quick pang against my thigh. even now, when it's 2 a.m. and the air is cold and my sheets are bare, i can still sometimes smell you in my hair.

your fingers melted down into the crease of the couch where your blood collected in rivulets, crimson and easy. you appeared at my doorstep one in the morning crying about some man and his dirty towels. when i saw what he had done to you -- heavy splashes like rainfall on the ivory carpet --  i whisked you up and laid you out to dry, like a mischevous child. and children occupied your mind then: "has he struck me barren?" you wondered aloud as I removed his towels and wiped off your thighs with my bedsheets instead. you infuriated me with words like i wonder will he call again? how i wished i could have held you,  rocked you away from your attachment to him. the moon bled white in the sky that night, tugged hard on your ovaries until they sang along: "oh moon, have mercy, i have only just sinned." and i could never begin to articulate that pressure in my chest that only comes along when i lay on the couch and still feel your river of warmth flowing beneath me.