Jenny Chu
We jogged to the park, sunburn avoided only by slacker jean shorts. His house faded into a footnote behind us, all flaming brick & forgotten whirrs. The playground was bursting with woodchips & slaps of tennis balls & hollow, solidly colored metal cylinders. Besides me, there were no kids. Previously I’d wanted to jangle X & be reborn as a teenager but the keyboard was crackling & I was misjudging the appeal of four walls. The moon was coming out like he had, a few ticks ago, against our window. Broken leaves crawled in circles around the benches & yet we still bent down. The trees wanted to breathe, I could tell. The straps of his 16-bit Birkenstocks darted between the prickly spears of grass like the last dangle of a hand. It was the first time I’d seen a real-looking boy with those shoes, with that cleavage of pride. The shock of his fashion blew out my finger & with it, new animation. Are you going to tell them? Of course, he’d known what it was his whole, flickering life. You move out tomorrow. Remember what we packed? The white liquor was glowing into an analogy of horror. He had always hated boxes. There was no more wiggle room for tenderness. He paused, humming one of those ’90s tunes he was obsessed with. Only the music.
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Jenny Chu is a Chinese-American writer from Dallas, Texas. She really loves Swedish Fish.