1.
swingset strangle prickly
The tag of my t-shirt was prickly on the nape of my neck. My pants were too short, my feet were hot in my shoes, and I was just about to strangle this girl Holly with the chain from one of the swings on the swingset.
I just wanted to keep walking past the hot asphalt of the basketball court with the foursquare game painted on it. (Has anyone ever known how to play foursquare?) I wanted to step into the cool space between the trees where nobody could see how red my face still was. Where the trees were older than anyone here, older than most of the kids would ever get to be, older than the kids who played foursquare on the basketball court, the kids who became our parents. The kids who grew up and still had kids, even knowing those kids would have to go to this same school someday.
2.
Unknown prompt
Love is nothing compared to hate in junior high. Hate could be just as good. It could be better. You could wake up and think, "I hate Amanda. I wish her father would get transferred to Michigan so I'd never have to see her stupid face ever again. And her stupid hair, and her pink Victoria's Secret pencil box and the fluorescent elastics on her braces that get spit in them that shines in the fluorescent lights of Mrs. Feeney's classroom that always smells like snow boots and tuna salad."
But you don't want Amanda's father to get transferred, not really, because hating Amanda is almost as good maybe better than loving someone. Every night when you go to bed you think about Amanda, when you step off the school bus you think about Amanda and her sneakers, her jeans, her braces, Amanda is a fire in your belly that feels almost exactly like love.
3.
First line: "cleavage looks better in black and white".
Cleavage looks better in black and white. At least, that's what they say. I wouldn't know. Cleavage has never interested me, no matter how many times I tried to make it true. No matter how many magazines I snuck out of my father's car trunk (don't ask me why he doesn't keep them in the house). No matter how many times I accidentally touched one of my girlfriends' boobs when I was in high school, no matter how many times I slept with Jenny in college. I would lie there after, feeling nothing. Promising myself that next time I would make it different, somehow.
Cleavage always looks better in black and white. I think someone said that to me at a bar one time. And I nodded, took my baseball hat off, ran my hand over my hair, put it back on. Coughed like a guy who likes cleavage might.
4.
red dog slipped
The sun on the red wine in the sidewalk cafe, fingers twirling the stem, wine warming, and a strap slipped down her shoulder, spaghetti, twirling the stem between her fingers, wine red, shoulders red, a long day in the sun coming slow to an end, skin red, sun red, wine red, the sidewalk cafe slowing from day to night, slipping into gloaming.
Almost sweater time, and she slips the strap up and down, up and down slips fabric between her fingers, red skin warm as wine in the sun, as the sun slips down, fingers twirling stem, the day twirls down to evening, sweater weather soon, but
not
quite
yet.
She leans to pet a passing dog, fingers on his collar, the strap
slips
down.
