It Would Remind me of your Sunglasses (1995)

Don’t tell me about the smell, the sickly sweet smell blowing off the wet clover growing through the tires in the vacant lot next to Allen’s and Ellen’s house. Go there, I guess, when the sunlight emerges after the afternoon rain, and breathe in that smell. Ride the bicycles, if you want, or walk, through the alley, past harried young mothers hanging laundry, past old men mowing lawns, past barking dogs and dumpsters full of clothes hangers and coffee grounds, past teenaged boys in baggy pants replacing the master cylinder, their hands wet with black dirty brake fluid.

But don’t tell me about the brick streets, still slick red with water, smelling like terracotta and the rain in Oklahoma. I’m sick of hearing about it. Don’t tell me.

I don’t need it, I don’t want the thing. I don’t have room in my suitcase anyway, and it would cost too much to ship it and I don’t want it; it would remind me of your sunglasses. Fly the fucking kite with the new girl, the tall dark one with her fingers rubbing the thin hair at the back of your head. Give her the kite, unfold it and fasten the cross-sprues, tether it to the line, give her the kite to hold. Watch the sunlight shine through the yellow nylon onto her face, casting her features in a pale golden light, the light inside a church. Pace off thirty, forty steps upwind through the worn weedy grass of the vacant lot, then start running.