“
Hey,
that’s
ago when I was given an
advance on my book and,
almost simultaneously, I fell
in love with the brownest
eyes.
Immediately
I
thought, a cottage in the
country. The advance was
mine.” He
truck door and hopped the
turned
four steps up to my porch.
with a fit of
The man was chewing
motorized
very
flatulence
and lurched
to the couch.
slowly,
smacking
his lips, mouth open. I
watched the dog being
steadily ground up in the
old man’s maw. His dainty,
easily spent but my love,
he wasn’t into the countryside. He
yellow-stained fingers grasped the
wanted to feel a community. I was
nubbin of the remainder of his stolen
not a community. He left without a
treat. His yellowed eyes tracked the
word one night and when his eyes
movements of mine, dark and beady.
asked, I had no words to give.
The man was on my porch when
“You found the snacks.”
He continued to chew and smack.
I arrived home from daddy’s on
He
brought
the
last
bite,
the
a Sunday. He was smoking with
nubbin, to his mouth and placed
one hand and eating a cold hot
it meticulously, tenderly upon his
dog from my refrigerator with the
white tongue. This man wore a
other. I shut off the engine in my
blank and filthy pink baseball cap.
pickup and stepped out of it into
He had an eye-matching mustard
the pine needles. Returning home
scarf tied around his neck and no
from my weekends with daddy are
shirt. His jean cut-offs were upper
my favorite part of my weekends
thigh length, his feet bare and
with daddy; the scent of pine is
brown with remnants of trek. He
fresh and new again. I shut the
chewed the meat, never blinking or