Moving Day

Genevieve Hudson
· in ,

Nothing is romantic about carrying a suitcase to the car. Dog runs between our legs, tail crooked, covering its genitals. We slide ice for it across the linoleum, because familiar feel good, and ice we joke—it’s supposed to be cold anyway. Anyway, you are wearing your green shirt, partly because it is my favorite and partly because you still love me.
When we moved here we thought it was the ghetto and said so. In the apartment above us lived a box full of talking humans who played music. They invited us for beers. Palms of katydids and crayons for their children, we came. We came in the corner, thumbs in one another’s jean pockets, while you gently pressed ribbons of words against my ear. No less than tectonic subsistence could have made me leave you then.
Now there is a mango in your hand, and I load the last luggage far enough in to block the back window. You knife off a sticky octagon of fruit, hand it to me. Orange, you say. Flesh, I say. Dog would like more ice. Words shift behind my eyes, but never travel to my mouth where I can taste them. Your lips are hard things. Neighbor lugs laundry to the washroom, in a sleepy voice says goodbye.

Genevieve Hudson resides and writes in Oregon, where she is a candidate for Portland State’s MFA in creative writing. Her fiction has previously appeared in Word Riot. She creates poetry, prose and is currently at work on her first novel.