a pattern in static

July.

It was the first weekend of the month and I skipped out on jury duty to sleep in. It may have been the last weekend but I know for certain it was July. The air was always sharp with gunpowder and the June bugs stuck to the screen door, never leaving even when I did. I spent the entire summer with a single woman and she laid next to me on a twin bed. Bare assed with the triangle patch of hair below her belly against the sticky skin of my thigh. I hate this fucking bed she’d say. I want to imagine us together I whispered to her. When I think of us in the future our bed never has a frame and the curtains are always cold and there’s sad music playing constantly. If we had kids we would make them listen to the Smiths. They wouldn’t understand until they were older. Maybe never. I hope to god they never understand that music. The future would remain as it was until we were certain that we were ready and everything was right.

This frameless bed better at least be a full she said and there better be cigarettes. You don’t smoke I said. I would pick up the habit from you she said. All the best writers smoked. And in the evening when those sad songs are playing their loudest through the dark little house of ours and embedding themselves in the mattress and reverberating through the floor I would cry into my pillow hoping every night that you didn’t kill yourself the next day. All the best writers do she says.