Prowler

The Last Months of Our Love

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

Long legs like crinoline around my hips. I peel her off the parapet. A little later, I’ll wash her face with cold water, but mind my suds around her eyes. She has yet things to see, my jelly-belly raucuous baby. But before, I’ll tuck her under the floorboards to check for mites, and dust my best fleece coat for fleas. Enjoys some good wordplay, my little minstrel from the sticks, so I’ll count to thirteen, then press my lips to the floorboards and whisper it to her. I’ll give her warning beforehand, because when I don’t, she laughs too hard and bumps her head on the floor above. I will say,

I am about to tell you a joke.

To which she will say… nothing. Because my ghost-lolly never speaks. Though she does occasionally crinkle a rapid-fire stream of jumble-jungle nonsense I’m getting too old to decode. And then, when she does, it’s my turn to say nothing. If she starts when I’ve gone, she won’t know until the floorboards are spick-span and by then, I’m mostly home anyhow. I don’t much stay out past dark, make my bed inside the nook of her thumbprint arm and clink my manacles against hers whenever I’ve come out of a nightmare. My way of saying you’re here, wayfarer.

She gets upset with me when I don’t listen to her because I make a point of wearing a wooly hat over my head, always, so she doesn’t know I pawned my ears to buy…