Before she even pulled away, I said it, softly,
and it spun like glitter in the space between my skull and brain:
Wait,
wait --
I admit that my lips didn't move. She didn't hesitate.
Maybe if I had let that icky fear catch at the chords in my throat,
if I had let my lips part, let the sound pass them,
she would have paused, just for a moment, missed a beat, half as scared as me.
One step backwards, yes, I had sensed it,
Wait, said my frantic heartbeat, pounding out a Morse code plea,
and she didn't. Her eyebrows rose at the inner edges: a perfected subtle faux sadness,
faux, that means fake, and it's French, her grandmother was French,
and why had that been one of the first things she'd told me?
She could have told me: I used to draw freckles on my nose and thought I was fooling everyone.
She could have told me: I never liked rain until the day I nearly drowned, trapped under a floating mat at the swimming pool, since then I've wanted water near me all the time, isn't that strange now?
She could have told me: In preschool I stole a stencil from a girl I hated, it tormented me until I was eight and I confessed to my father.
“My grandmother was French; she never trusted an Irish boy. It's good you won't have to meet her.”
Four steps away,
and the noise escapes my throat,
raw, mistrusting, terrified:
Wait --
I imagine the word to be a wounded fox crawling from my mouth, flinching at the freezing air.
She doesn't wait.
If flowers really grew in people's footsteps,
they would be blooming in hers.