Twenty-Eight

We’re in bed again and you’re peeling a kiwi with your fingers. Get a knife, I say. It’s only a suggestion. I’m always telling you what to do. You turn twenty-nine tomorrow. You have sideburns and regular elbows. You look like a movie star. Kirk Cameron? you ask, but I don’t remember what he looks like and I’m not even sure he was in any movies. No, I say. A kiwi rolls off the bed.

There was a hibiscus tree in here earlier but now it’s gone. Someone came and moved it back where it came from. I liked it better in here. I guess someone in this house was having a party. Were we even invited? You shake your head. It looked at home in here. Like a fairy tale, you said. Or was it me who said that? Okay. Like a fairy tale, I said. This huge tree hovering over us, here on the bed, like it was real, and it was.

You know that song? No, you say. You don’t look up from the kiwis.

I’m wearing the old Chinese robe the color of swimming pools and you’re wearing a shirt that shows off your elbows. The bed is the color of cherry kool-aid in the sunshine. I am thinking that later I will look back and say: I was young and beautiful, and I knew it even then. But did I? I mean, do I?

You’ve picked up a pen and you’re writing something. You’ve given up on the kiwi. Some kiwis lie abandoned on the bed. You turn twenty-nine tomorrow and tomorrow is almost today. The lens for your right eye has fallen out of your glasses three times tonight. It always makes a sound like breaking glass when it hits the floor, but it never breaks. Maybe it never will. Pass me a kiwi, I say.