Entry #11

Homecoming
by Sarah Hina


I was meant to fall in love that night.

Homecoming Dance was my shabby canvas, a Zuckerman twin my silkier muse. Chloe Z., who claimed to be a reincarnated goddess, rubbing henna onto her hands, her hair, her calico “art.” I condoned this crazy for lissome legs and musical ankles, which, granted, I’d only peeped through shredded stockings and the eyelets of combat boots. The skin underneath? As wanton as a waning moon, winking across the crowded night.

I gunned the Firebird down the country road, cursing myself for being late on such a night, for such a girl. Her corsage, a weak carnation, quivered on the passenger seat, along with empty bottles and a box of rubbers.

It was autumn. The leaves were cheap confetti, tumbling through the air.

Rounding a curve, something darted across my path. I slammed on my brakes, tires skidding, until the hood smacked something (white) and shuddered into silence.

I stepped out of the car.

Afterward, I stepped back in.

Rumors followed that Chloe was pissed. I couldn’t care. High school was a fucking fairy tale by then, without the tra-la-la ending. I drove on, down other roads.

But sprawled under this calico sky, I remember another harvest dawn. And how I shivered atop the stiffening grass, dully absorbing that autumn is Nature’s last ejaculate, before the rigor mortis of winter, and spring’s rebirth.

I was meant to fall in love that night.

But for those tumbling, tumbling leaves.

Stained henna, stained with blood.