the aisle

[counterphobe]

I even miss feeling cold when the room thumped around us like it was alive. We had stuck our sleeves out of the window and waited for the breeze to disappear, the same moment the door closed, which we took as an omen of death. There were other signs: the hard, pimpled grin of Halloween's pumpkin on your dresser, one mirror always unclean, what seemed like an entire hallway of boys, boys boys. A heartache thrummed like the origin of fever from our breathing eastward wall. I'm glad to have wrought sweat under the same trance of adolescence, even if nine months carry us away. We fought like a night shift and made up in our dreams. Your glassy eyes reflective, provoking of shameless honesty, my bad habits tightening to a sharp vice. Something we found cobbled together. We went to the basement for a bucket of ice and charged three-legged into the night, each time sleep came to us unexpected and itself inebriated. This is what I'll remember: