“Freud had something with that whole ‘oral fixation’ thing.” Even though I tell people I don’t smoke, “Nothing beats sucking from that last smooth cylinder on the porch after dark.”
I lit the cig and took a drag, then threw the spent match over the rail. Heard it slap the packed dirt.
My eyes dropped into the shadows after it as I let out that first breath. “Once had a dream we lived on a frozen sea. Our deck went right down to the water and the railing wobbled like one of those old rocking horses. Each time a tourist leaned over to take a picture I’d end up in the water. But I never got cold.”
Kath didn’t look at me; she just stared into the black haze beyond the light. Skud had been digging in the yard again: an old newspaper was in tatters by a huge dirt mound. Jayson’s old tricycle still had its front wheel embedded in the rust and erosion of that last rain we ever had.
“Like to know what Freud’ve thought of that.”
“I once had a dream,” she said.
I blew smoke.
“I was walking through a bunch of willows. Instead of branches hanging down there were these little strings of blue lights. When I touched them they lit up brighter, so I was going through them all. Making the forest glow.” She paused while I took another puff, “Then some man in a black suit appeared. Told me I couldn’t do that, and shot me in the face.”
Wisps of gray cloud hit the air like dragon fire and dissipated in the dark; I watched it go. “What’s a forest?”
She looked up at me. “What’s a sea?”
A breath of smoke. “Something far away.”
Kath turned back to the dark. “So is a forest.”
We watched the night crawl in. I never thought I’d miss the sound of crickets chirping. But they had disappeared soon after the rain.
The summer air was heavy with dust and nicotine.
— C.M.
