There’s moonlight coming off the water, and my thumb hurts
from where it got burnt from the lighter that I used to light
the candles that we put along the shore, and right now we’re
stringing together sentences in nonsense German that we
think sounds funny, talking about childhood days as if
they’re decades removed, and they are, but not as far
removed as we’d like to pretend, because we’re not that old
just yet, even with the creaking in our joints, and we’re taking
classes, major after major, degree after degree, not sure
where it’s going to wind up, but we’re going there together,
down the line where soil and water meet, leaving these
candles we got at the dollar store, the ones with the wicks
that go bad after only a couple lights, but we light them
anyway, thinking it can make somebody’s day, or rather
night, if they come down and see it the way we see it just
now, in this moment with the lights like stars right down
there in front of us, and we talk all speculative, like dreaming
about possibilities of massive cosmic beings lighting
universes into being, talk about all the ways the world has
changed, on that border between analog and digital,
remembering bicycles strung across the lawn, and that’s the
way you’d tell where all your friends were, then beepers with
numbers in place of letters, 80085 because at that age that
joke was funny every single time you told it, and we ran
down to the basketball hoops that didn’t have nets and set
up trampolines we stole from neighbors’ backyards and
almost got caught that one time, but we just barely made it
out, ditching the things and running out into the woods,
following the trail we heard was made by satanists who
made their offerings in the light of the moon, the moonlight
coming up now, not down but off the water, and our vapor is
traveling out into the night, and we’re listening to Mac
DeMarco off the tinny speakers of your phone, letting
Spotify algorithms take over and dictate what it is we’re
going to listen to for the rest of the night, and before we got
here we went down to Target and played the demo games
they had on display, reclined on their comfy chairs and acted
like we were testing them out whenever a store employee
came by, like we were debating a purchase, as if they’d kick
us out anyway, as if they’d give a shit what we were doing,
and we pulled out Nerf swords and did battle in the middle of
the aisle, fluorescent light above preventing any shadows
from existing anywhere at all, and we started to see all the
things we’d seen when we were younger and could still
imagine that there was a world beyond all of this, a world
where when we grew up we could eat candy whenever we
wanted and have ice cream for breakfast and play video
games all day, as if that was something to look forward to,
times when we’d burn out VHS tapes at friends’ houses,
mess with the tracking to get it looking okay, but it never
really came in clean again, but that didn’t really matter
because we knew those movies by heart anyway, would call
out the lines at all the appropriate moments, sing along to
the songs, and now we have to remind each other to drink
water and get to bed at a normal time and eat greens every
once in a while, maybe buy some fruit the next time you go
to the store, and we leave messages unread and reply when
we’re emotionally able, stretching sentences into moments
that we know will never come again, and we’re scrolling
through feeds and sharing and wandering down streets so
we can be alone together, and it’s a hollow beauty, and
there’s moonlight coming off of everything everywhere, out
in the woods, or down by the water, or walking through
downtown late at night, because we feel like if we can be out
on the street at 2 in the morning it’s almost like we’ll never
grow old, and we’re trying not to sound like back-in-my-day
grandpas, but that’s what it’s coming to, speaking to the new
generation, warning them about the ones that came before
us, shielding them so they can get shit done, exchanging our
scant wisdom for their vocab, and we try not to get too
embarrassed when they laugh at our mispronunciation, try
to ignore the creeping thought that we’re becoming the
lame old people even though we’re not even 30 yet, and now
we’re kissing down by the water, one after another, taking
turns because that seems like the right thing to do at this
particular moment, and we’ve got whiskey in our bellies, and
our vapor is still floating out into the atmosphere, and we
like to think that it’ll collide with the clouds way up there
even though we know it won’t, and none of us know what
we’re going to do tomorrow, I mean we have jobs, some of
us go to school, we do what we have to, but we don’t know
what we’ll do, you know, and you put your fingers to your lips
after we kiss as if to touch is to solidify, and I watch the way
your cheeks warm up even in the cool night, shining bright
under the moon, and there’s got to be meaning in some of
this even if it’s so hard to find meaning in all the rest, and this
hollow beauty isn’t so hollow anymore, and we don’t know
what all this is yet, but we’re just going to go with it for now.
∞
Nicholas Olson is a writer from Chicago now living in North Carolina. He was a finalist for Glimmer Train’s 2016 Very Short Fiction Award, his work was included in Crack the Spine’s sixteenth print anthology, and he’s been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, decomP, and other fine places. Read more at nicksfics.com.
