Three Time Loser and Here’s Maybe Why
Sheldon Lee Compton
Spring 2010
Spring 2010
A strange girl slammed through the front door of my house, running like her hair was on fire, and came to the side of my bed.
I was eight. You may think this isn't true, but it happened. I’ve said this to three women. I’ve asked each of them what they thought it meant, how they thought it might have made a difference.
The girl must have been fifteen or sixteen. I remember her wide eyes, not frightened but manic. A current of electricity diving for a ground. A disowned muse who had dropped kicking into insanity and was now sitting on the side of my bed. A face made of all eyes and mouth, blue eyes clear even without moonlight and lips rubbed red and swelled.
The pushed out lips smiled down at me, parting to show crooked teeth, endearing because they were crooked, an incisor pointing off to the corner of her mouth, the front teeth pulled slightly apart, a gap as lovely to me as it was maybe bothersome to her.
I didn't speak to her. She didn't speak to me. Leaning closer to where the sheets were tucked under my chin, she kissed me long and hard. Lust seeped out of her like a smell, a mist spraying out into the room. Every pore of her skin was the needled opening of a perfume bottle. Her hair covered my face, swirled hot ribbons curling the ridge of my collarbone. I kept my arms at my sides. I did not touch her. Not once. But I did reach out my fingertips into the changed air of the room after she coiled back into myth and was gone.
I thought about her for weeks after that, but I never think of her anymore. I never imagine what her name might have been. I never try to remember more details or ask myself why she ever came into my house in the first place. I have not thought of her. Not once.