The Visitor - September 18, 2010

        You’ve run away from home and showed up at my door. Wearing a sad grin, a top hat, and a pair old, battered boots. Somehow, I feel like I’ve been here before.

    “Come in, goddamn it.”

    “No need to curse.”

    It’s late, your poor mother must be up the wall with worry. She must miss you, I always do when you’re gone.

    Now, I’ve offered you tea, but you politely decline and you’re still smiling in that way that makes me want to cry. I also notice that your eyes aren’t nearly as blue at night time and your speech is not as sharp. You’ve begun to talk about the circumstances that brought you here, in the middle of this night. The dense, delicate, white, December night.

    I must admit, I’m no longer in love with your stories, they’ve quickly turned into mundane complaints. I used to listen to you tell these tales like you were orchestrating a symphony. Now, you drawl like a sad, old country song. So for lack of tolerance,  I cut you off.

    “Where’d you get that top hat from?”

    “It was my great-grandfather’s.”

    You lean over the table and pucker your lips, they are cracked and blue from the cold. You walked here, didn’t you? I kiss you for exactly two and a half minutes. Then I stand up and take two cigarettes from my open pack and hand them to you. You stow them away inside your breast pocket, where I know you also keep a matchbook. I tell you that you should get home, it’s late, it’s cold.

    When you leave, I will blow you a soft kiss from the palm of my hand, it will float along with you in the winter wind and keep there, in the air until the night is wet, fresh, and full of the new Spring.

-Kortnee Tilson