My cousin, on the cheek; this was before she was a lesbian, before I got PTSD, before she got remarried, before I had my thyroid diagnosis, before she had finished elementary school, before I found out there’s no such thing as Santa Claus;

the girl while playing tag, where she said she’d kiss me if I’d let her escape, to rush back out into the playground, and I remember how she ran away, how I felt her lips on my lips even after her lips were disappearing under the darkness of the slide where someone else was hiding;

at the summer camp, on the log, after she’d told me what alcohol had done to her family, after I’d told her about putting a gun to my mouth, the same mouth, and she kissed me like she was scared of me and I kissed her like I was scared of her family and I couldn’t even hear the forest;

after the dance, except we didn’t dance, and she wore black every day and I told her she was beautiful and she said she hated that word and I could taste smoke afterwards and she could taste thesaurus afterwards and she threw me away from her body when she was done with me;

my best friend’s girlfriend when she wasn’t his girlfriend or was his girlfriend but he said he didn’t want her to be his girlfriend anymore and we were at her house in her bedroom where she said she wanted to show me her curtains and she showed me her curtains and it made no sense but I was thankful to God that she understood how to lie;

& at the drive-in after I’d put all my friends in the trunk so that we could sneak in and then I locked the keys in the car with the engine running and the lights on and people were honking their horns because my headlights were on the screen and I worried my friends would die in the trunk but eventually the cops came and opened the doors and they left and so I opened up the trunk and my best friend at the time said he was going to kill me except all these girls came over because I’d told them what I’d done and when I opened the trunk my suffocated friends saw the car lined with girls and later one of them kissed me after the movie was almost done and she said, “You’re the stupidest boy I’ve ever met” and she looked like the country singer Faith Hill if Faith Hill had no money or hope.

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Ron Riekki wrote U.P.: a novel (Ghost Road Press), Posttraumatic: A Memoir (Four Chambers Press/Hoot ‘n’ Waddle/Small Press Distribution), and My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press).

Photo: Jan Kolar / VUI Designer