S H E I L A    C A L L A G H A N

But the 70 degrees is the thing that kills. As you walk down the leaf-coated street you think of the one person whose lover you should have been. You think of jumping into a pile of leaves with him in Central Park, though never in your adult life have you jumped into a pile of leaves and especially not in Central Park where there could be rats lurking beneath and CERTAINLY not in the light fall coat you just got back from the dry cleaners... but anyway today there are no rats and coats don't get dirty and the air was meant for eating and strangers are there for you to touch yes that lady with the beautiful knee-high brown leather boots and the chocolate corduroy skirt is yours and yes the man with the square-toed shoes and the Times folded beneath his arm blowing on his coffee waiting for the light to change he is yours too.

And your lover, the one you never had... he is lying in a pile of leaves around the bend, breathing heavily from the exertion of his leap. His arms are outstretched. He's waiting for you.

And at some moment, much later, he'll push the hair away from your ear and lean in and you'll shiver from his breath and he'll whisper something, he'll whisper to you about the feeling in his throat or the smell of your neck, then he'll tell you the story of how he was born in an open field during a thunderstorm or on a whaling ship in the Arctic ocean or inside the pupil of a miniature horse, then he'll tell you he has to leave which you already knew but still will cause a million tiny deaths inside you, and then he'll tell you something else you already knew: "we'll remember this all of our lives..."