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holding the popsicle in his hands he smiles at me ever so gently. summer still setting in like something delightful waiting for us and we aren’t young again but we can pretend. he rips it open in his mouth with his teeth like a dog like the dog he is sometimes when the time is right and gives me a smile so familiar that it makes me ache, a question that he already knows the answer to.
summer of 75 we were sitting slouched together sharing cigarettes and exhaling open breath into each other’s mouths and running out of excuses to touch each other. his hands on me some sort of benediction. i still remember the time jamie took him to church and he stood there at the doorway doing nothing, flinching from the looks everyone threw his way.
we knew we were illegal then. our love, and by extension, us. and now in the house we still give each other lingering looks and share cigarettes when harry’s not around but on days like this he sheds his grief like a big black dog shaking a shaggy wet coat and the droplets sprinkling everywhere like a light summer drizzle. first day of rain.
he puts the popsicle in his mouth. for a moment neither of us is a man in his thirties. we’re children again, in james’s backyard, waiting for him to bring the picnic food outdoors from inside the house. mischief managed.
i watch him suck and swallow. i kiss him to taste the juice in his mouth. sugar and watermelon. nothing is sweet anymore. not him, nor me. but the moment is sweet. i take it as it comes. kiss him once, twice. again and again. each kiss a promise of the next one. looking to a future.