New Year

The wind was loud and sweeping, hoovering up everything from last year and piling it into neat bundles somewhere nobody could see. Yesterday still hovered above us like a cape. The walls shook. My toes curled inside my socks. I had never been less of a child. Each part of me felt older. I thought about us both sitting in chairs but I don’t know why. I saw you sitting on a chair with a wooden back. I imagined the edges of your shoulders against the wood. I imagined the yellowing bone, how it would feel in my mouth; the edge of your shoulder between my top lip and my tongue. Your hands were flat on your thighs like two coasters and your legs and your bare feet made L’s against the floor. I would search your body for every mark that was made before now and by something else. I would forget myself in you. I would disappear behind your skin. I would stop fighting and fall forward. I would be weak but I would be yours and the New Year would belong to us.

I thought I heard the sound of house keys but it was the loud, sweeping wind beginning to whistle, and I followed the noise until I was back beneath a grey, hovering cape, and you were somewhere else, in a chair that grazed your shoulders, getting ready to start again.