Elizabeth Alford

Thunderstruck

– for GEZ

I could feel the current running deep beneath my skin where my forehead met your neck, my cheek against your still-wet coat. I sensed, intimately, how our bodies were drawn to each other even in those last minutes like polarized magnets, positive and negative a waltz of perfect synchronicity.

"I want this man this moment," I thought dizzily.

We sat without speaking, focused on the rain pelting the roof of my car, filling potholes to overflowing in the street ahead ("just enjoying the moment," as you often say) before you disengaged your arm from my shoulders and slowly lifted it away.

That was the signal that it was time to go. That the moment was over. Again.

I was fortunate that night: it was dark enough you couldn't see the wanton reluctance spread itself across my face, the pulsing heat risen in my cheeks—and under my clothes.

"I want this man," I thought again as you cracked open the door and stepped into storm, "and not for just a moment."

lightning flash –
the uncertainty
of spring