magicktitle

she took the bottle off me and said “i’m the man”. she picked the lighter up off the step, fit it in her closed fist against the neck. fingers a fulcrum, lighter a lever, she pushed it with her free hand and popped off the lid. have you ever read garden of eden? me and abbie read it once. the day she got her lip pierced. i left her lying on her back in the tattoo chair and walked across the road into a second-hand bookshop right up to the shelf and picked it up like it was a dance routine i’d practiced. we’d been talking about it for days, about wanting to read it. it was the only book of his they had. she dyed her hair white too, bleach and lightening. that was about when it all started to fall apart. it was never really that together, but that was when it went off the rails. a few days later he came to the door of the big pink house. he was on the lamb. they sat together talking in our kitchen. it was so dark in that front room. nothing in it but a rocking chair. and me, i guess, rocking.