We Mistook This for the Beginning of Something

With her I learned of the omentum. There is a greater and a lesser, and we held hands while looking at both. There is an ability to heal small wounds, to stretch across the open space and connect, absorb, to fold into perfect moments of love. When exposed, the omentum billows out, looks larger than is possible. The folds come undone, some of it turning transparent, some of it looking delicate. In the car, after midnight, amongst the moving lights of Vegas, you cry when I drive the wrong way down a one-way street. Stretching across the open space for that perfect moment of escape, I save us, after I almost kill us. I pull into a parking lot and reach for you, wanting to wrap around your body like an omentum, greater and lesser. You cry harder and I strain to pull you closer, to be larger for the holding. You cry even harder and I feel I am billowing out, unfolding, undone. Both of us undone in a parking lot, too transparent to be seen, even in the Vegas lights.


This story appeared in Issue 9.2. Pick up your issue today.

 

T. A. Reeser works in nonprofit literary publishing and lives in California.