I beg her pardon, a sleight hand pushed under skirt, into the moss with tinge of necessity, a lower magic, a form of essence and hunger. “You seem so serious,” I hear her breath on my skin, fingering the darkness, a different memory, a different never again will I be so stupid. I slide foot into shoe, fall floorward, over pile of slumped-up laundry, tangled jeans. It is worse than before, a new forever, the walking away, the forward motion toward isolation that isn’t as cute as it was last time.

Jasper Kerkau

[Jasper Kerkau is writer, publisher, and editor for Sudden Denouement Publishing and Literary Collective]

5/3/19