An unshareable autumn night: you + I walked along sodium-lit sidewalks. Stars tucked themselves in squirrels nests but didn’t know how to hide. You laughed, pressed a wafer cookie onto my stretched-out tongue, collapsed the roof of my mouth. Who knew my alveolar ridge could bear so little unsanctified communion? My cheeks bulged with impious points of articulation. I only wanted to pronounce words we never know how to say, spit them on the grass to see sparks of uncast magic. When you were too shy to clear the wreckage, your teeth became coated with unutterable affection. You blamed the snow that hadn’t yet fallen, that would melt when it hit the ground, that would never turn the sidewalk slick with unmissable opportunities. I almost enchanted you, you know. I sketched cryptographs around my wrists; your incantation hummed without a single voiceless stop.
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