INTIMACY
© Jacqueline Alpers
INTIMACY
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Once in line at the supermarket I saw a boy barely taller than a toddler with three large growths on his head, three pink bubbles boiling from his brain, as if a needle had been slipped between skin and skull and pumped air into his flesh. A single prick and his face would explode.
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I thought of you as I watched him eat a candy bar, watched him smear mud and drool across his lips, watched his eyes fly open with desire, point to a Tonka Toy and babble at his father. The father flinched in his slow moving dream of brown paper bags and woke to the ring ding bright light thank you have a nice day of the check-out line. The father’s mouth popped open, as if he had never seen any of it ever before.
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Amazing, how the food just kept coming down those cracked black belts.
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The father asked the boy what he wanted. The boy pointed to the Tonka. The father shook his head No.
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I thought of you. The smell of your hair, the scar on your leg, how you ground your teeth when you slept in my bed, how you pinched your face and listened patiently to my hum-drum-doo-dah-I-love-you life stories.
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