From the Sky - December 14, 2010

    She had her nose to the sky, looking at the stars; she couldn’t name any of the constellations. She was looking up at that sky like there was a sign up there, flashing her name. I asked her what she was staring at, I sipped on the cigarette that we’d been passing back and forth.
   
    “No one falls from the sky.” she said. I wondered if she was a prude or a tease. Did men confront her and shoot their pickup lines at her, like constant gunfire? Did she wage war with them? This is what I imagined: She’s gotten off work, her feet are tired, she leans on the bar with her a** perked to the world and pushed up by the barstool. Naturally, as if it’s some sort of unwanted mating call, the men flock to her. This burly, wily bastard strolls up to her with a cheeky grin and a pocketful of hard earned, cold cash, he’s hoping to buy her drinks. Drinks and drinks and drinks.
   
    “Tell me, baby, did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?” Poor a**hole.
   
    “No one falls from the sky.”

    She took the smoke from my hand when I held it out. I stopped imagining her with men cause I didn‘t want to believe it would be that way with her. She shivered and I told her I wished that things fell from the sky.

    “I didn’t say things, I said people.”

    I asked her what the hell that meant. Truthfully, just about everything she did confused me. She shrugged and passed back the cigarette, our hands smelled like nicotine and ash.

    “I don’t know. I think some s**t must come out of nowhere.”

    I thought, like you and me? Right out of nowhere, right out of the sky. I asked her if she was really gay because I’ve been lied too a lot. People f**k around.

    “I‘m not lying.”

    Her nose was still pointing up the that dark sky, she was really thinking about it, I guess. Then I asked her if it hurt.

    “Did what hurt?”

    When you fell from heaven?

    She looked at me and shook her head, laughing. “Yeah, sure as hell did.”

The End
 

-Kortnee Tilson