No Good Reason

Tonight,
For no good reason,
We danced with sparklers
Barefoot
Under the February moon.

A Piece of Wonderful

I was gazing past him,  around him,  looking at the brown husks of banana leaves then up at the cloudless sky.

He talks abut his week and his friends and then animatedly describes an entire movie while I nod, hugging my knees to my chest, drafting emails and writing essay questions in my head.    

Mental admonitions that go something like “write something, write anything, stop not writing and get back to writing” march soullessly and mercilessly across my head like the running banner on 24 hour news channels.  

My stomach hurts all the time, I realize, then pull myself away from the burning knot, back to the backyard, noticing a tense brown bird looking down from the fence at me. At us.

His warm hand on my thigh pulls me back down from my thoughts and into the serious look in his blue-green eyes. “I need you to write me something.”

He asks almost nothing of me, but now? This?

I like it.

“What would you like me to write?”

“Write something on paper for me to remember you by. I want to carry around so I can hold it and always remember you.”

I follow his eyes down to the pond where two fat orange fish dart between shells in the newly clean water.

He looks back at me, then continues, “Write ‘I love you.’ I will fold it up and carry it with me, and put in my wallet and keep it always. So I will never forget you.”

I nod, “Absolutely. And will you write something for me, too? So I can always carry around a piece of you?”

He nods, then smiles at the gravity of the request. “I will do that for you.”

So there we sat, chaperoned by the bird and fish, while the wind turned cooler and fat clouds gathered to watch me hold my son on my lap,  soaking up this delicious piece of wonderful.