it was a loft room in some barn. everything was white with snow outside. we had to climb a ladder to get to where you were, sitting in your wooden room with big windows. you were looking at the forest below. watching for animals in the forest below. we startled you as we climbed. you thought we were animals from the forest with our strange noises & wide eyes. (you had always thought of me an animal. wild & careless & selfish & free. there was that one time in your room, before you moved away, that you grabbed my wide hips & you said ‘it surprises me at night when i don’t hear you howl’ & you smiled a scared little smile.) ‘hello’ i smiled & waited for you to yell about ‘why are you here’ or ‘leave get out’ but i had stumbled upon your dwelling with a friend & you probably thought it best not to offend. ‘hello there.’ you smiled a genuine warm smile. you looked much older, i looked much older. it had been a year, or two, or three. we were no longer wild or free. you invited us in to keep warm & we discussed how our lives had changed. nothing felt like knives as i had imagined each word would. we had grown up backwards. we no longer discussed finances, we discussed exploring our surroundings. we no longer discussed terrible television, we discussed the simple sound the skeleton trees made in the breeze. as the night moved on we lost our words. first i lost ‘you’ & you lost ‘i’ then ‘now, we, past, hate, angry’ until all the words were lost. we made sounds we didn’t know our bodies could. clicks, grunts, whistles, & finally when i kissed you good bye…we howled.
