god milk

The night was blurry in that way it gets when you’ve had too much and eaten too little—when the stars are just smudges, like your thoughts.

You were beside me, as useless as I was, but you were allowed.

Birthday boy. I was your haphazard toy, behind the wheel in a way I shouldn’t have been. But danger and us were friends.

The rain opened up like God himself had commanded every angel to breastfeed lovers for one night only. You were full of forever, coming closer, but I saw the way your sister looked at me an hour before when everything was upside down and dancing too quick—as though I were a problem for your future, as though our children would be born demented if she let this go on.

I could see the hourglass in her palm.

Fate was sealed then, even before you got on one knee the next week. I told you no, and do you know what they say about how hard that card is to play? Sharper than the diamond you splayed for me. I was cruel: I slipped it onto my finger and shook my head—both, at once.

Rewind.

That night was chaos in the storm. The brakes were worn thin. The tree was where it shouldn’t have been.

Across the road—broken—like I thought my heart might be when I heard it explode.

A man pretended to rescue us, but he was a security guard wanting to fuck a cop. He called them quick, pounced on the hotline. I was as devious as I’ve always been. Let him walk away just off my leash as all that milk poured down. Then my trembling foot found the pedal beneath my stiletto.

You squeezed my hand and whispered an intricate spell, not in English, and as we flew on our broom, I saw the cop the guard wanted on his knees.

He braked, and I wondered if my literature program would ban me for this. I knew the answer.

The price I paid for pretending to like your sister when her boyfriend’s urges crossed my own shaky lines—how she felt had everything to do with that and nothing to do with you. I heard they have kids now. Ours would’ve been yours in the end; she wasn’t wrong about everything.

The blue lights never flashed, and if they had, none of this would matter. Trajectories save lives like that.

It was over then. It’s over now. And I have this slicing urge to cut through what I should kiss.

You were on my warpath.
I hope you forgive me for this.