First Kiss/Last Dance (High Volume)
by Legacy Russell
Here’s how the dream ends:
It is Summer. Moisture is crucified in the air with two wooden clothespins and a wire hanger.
You are told there are trees in the city but everywhere you look you cannot see them and so you will all get into your little cars and drive up to the woods. In the woods there is a box. The box is a present already undressed. Climb in.
Inside you will hold your sweetie tight and tell her not to fear the Fall. You know everything will be dead by Winter, curdled and caked into coffins of frost and dirt: you will lie anyway and tell her not to fear the Fall.
Inside you sit by bodega-bought candle light and in this upside down Looking-Glass you’re Alice and a cigarette smokes you, wrapped in rolling papers like five-hundred thread count Egyptian sheets. When lips meet you will realize you have just pressed the stars of embers into your own skin. The scar will be a crescent moon.
Sometimes it is light inside the box. Sometimes it is dark inside the box. Some things will stick because they have to; other things will fall off. Those things you will leave behind. You will not miss them.
Goodbye, Summer. Spring, we are stuck on your station, you are the porn for when the dancehall goes quiet and the dream —
LEGACY
