Folding

The night is knotting itself up and closing around the trees.

At some point, the street lamps came on, and, if I hold perfectly still, maybe Madeline won’t pack up the day.

Music is still playing across the tennis court, courtesy of a small, cheap speaker. The way the music fizzles between words and refrains feels almost right when it’s out in the open like this. When we are out in the open like this.

Her hair is wild across the clay court floor, like a sea witch perfectly framed in a movie, but her lips are relaxed and bowed and ready to hold breath behind them to keep from breaking the spell with a word.

I stare, unbridled, at her cheek bones until she turns to me. Her eyes are quilting excitement and pain and beginnings and the end all at once. Her fingertips tap on my collar bone, a silent joke about it getting late.

I reach out, and suddenly our hands are folding together like paper planes and we’re turning and turning, and who said we have to be home just yet?

She is petting my long hair, but I suddenly hear her inhale slowly and her mouth opens and I know the night both captured us and is absolutely over.