---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v078) (the January 2010 Issue) This is also available from our printer as a a $7.47 paperback book (5.5" x 8.5") perfect-bound w/ b&w pages

Order this writing in the book (bound) Down in the Dirt prose edition		order the 5.5" x 8.5" ISSN# book order the 8.5" x 11" ISBN# book

Amy

Caleb True

    She showed up, first on the internet, then in person upon arrival home for the summer. Amy and I had been friends before, in high school.
    We talked for a long time online before there were sparks.
    How about you, she finally asked. Seeing anyone?
    I was seeing nobody. Her boyfriend in Philadelphia was keeping her.
    She auditioned for a short play while in town, and invited me to come see it if she made it.
    I told her I would love to.
    Everyone was socializing after the play, and I made my way toward the door. Amy came out from behind the curtain and rushed into my arms.
    We went back to my house afterward, and looked at photos from Europe on my bed. She left the smell of her hair on the blankets.

~

    Earlier that summer, my parents had moved out for a job opportunity in the Capitol. I was left with the house. It had not occurred to me how drafty and cavernous the place was. The refrigerator shuddered in the middle of the night, the wind banged the window frames in their tracks.
    The days were humid; I kept all the windows on the second floor open. I hung the compost bucket from a chopstick propped in the window, so it didn’t stink up the kitchen.
    I walked around naked, drank beer, lifted weights in front of the mirror. I took extra classes at the University, playing catch up after a year loafing in Europe.
    I did homework late at night when I couldn’t sleep, and swatted mosquitoes drawn to the computer screen.
    In the early morning the TV glowed. I ate breakfast slouched in a wooden chair with my feet up on the kitchen table, and would peel my ass off the seat to pour some tea or heat up leftovers.
    While food rotated in the microwave, I would grab the detergent bottle and squirt out a poisonous barrier where ants got in from between the wall and the floor. The ants had a little operation that led from the crumbs under the toaster to their home in the compost pile at the edge of the garden. They snuck in through the cracks. I filled the cracks with gobs of detergent.
    They squirmed, got stuck in the goo, and died.

~

    Nothing happened with Amy until weeks later when we went to the movies. She told me she had broken up with the boy in Philadelphia. In the theatre, I held her chin and gently turned her head. In the dark, with the flashing images of the movie to the right, my lips found hers. We kissed, and came apart staring.

~

    We cooked dinner for her parents, split a beer. We touched arms under the table.
    We went to the sunroom after dinner, which went late. She turned on the window fan to make noise. She put on music.
    We connected, stroking. I tasted her, inhaled the smell of conditioner and smoke from her parents’ cigarettes at dinner. I licked her top row of teeth. She bit her lip. Her mouth opened and no sound escaped, and with one arm she reached for the radiator unit at the wall.
    She said her arms went numb. My left leg thrummed. I got up to get a Kleenex, and nearly blacked out, supporting myself with both hands on the sill, focusing on the moth caught between the panes of glass. I closed my eyes.

~

    My house became a palace that summer, and Amy and I ravaged each other in the Queen bed on the first floor. Sweating all over each other in the sunroom at her house, curling up in each other’s arms at my place. Swatting mosquitoes off each other in the dark, rising at dawn to make pancakes.
    She poured detergent on the ants while I covered the pancakes with syrup.
    The sunlight came in the window and lit the kitchen, shone off her golden hair and smooth skin. She turned, detergent bottle in hand, and smiled.
    I didn’t want to think that we had less than a week left together. She must have seen the thought on my face as I gazed at her.
    What, she said with a faltering smile. She knew.
    She put down the detergent bottle and came over to me. I stood up and we held each other. I smelled her hair.
    The syrup had melted into the pancakes by the time we sat down.

~

    Autumn came, and I scaled back my grocery shopping. Amy was gone, back at school. Feeding only one required much less cooking, fewer peels in the compost bucket, fewer trips to the compost pile.
    As it got colder outside, the ants stopped their pilgrimage from the compost pile in the garden, through the cracks, over the gobs of detergent, to the crumbs underneath the toaster.
    I cleaned the detergent mess I had made all summer killing the ants. When I took out the compost bucket it occurred to me that maybe I was feeding the ants with the compost pile, which stank ripe.

~

    We did out best to stay together.
    Up late at night, hunched over the computer, or in bed with the phone to my ear, I asked how her day was. She asked me about fighting the ants. When it was time, we said goodnight and sometimes lingered, teasing each other in the dark before we signed off, hung up. Always at the end, the last word would be a sincere insistence.
    She said of course we could do it, we were meant for each other.
    I’ve never felt this way before, she said.

~

    With the first snow, Amy flew home for a brief weekend visit. I prepared her favorite dish with broccolis and spicy carrot relish.
    We popped a cork and drank, but made no toast.
    After dinner we laid in bed for a long time, not talking.
    The sun set, darkening the bedroom where we nestled. Dim light from the streetlamp outside the window gleamed off her moist cheeks, and she sobbed into my shoulder.
    She said the long distance was killing her. She just couldn’t do it anymore. I did not know what to say that could help the situation any. I resigned myself to just listen, but she was done. Just lying there in silence for an hour or two longer, it became too much.
    She put on her shoes, and left.

~

    The colder it became, the more I avoided taking the compost bucket out altogether. I pitched peels in the trash and took that out instead.
    Mid winter I finally capitulated.
    I tiptoed the compost bucket out to the garden, avoiding kicking snow into my slippers. On my way back in I noticed the ants at work in the basement, piling their dead in mounds on the floor. I had destroyed half of the mounds on my way out, scattering the bodies when I opened the door.
    I washed out the compost bucket and soaped it up to cover the stench. I rinsed the maggot larvae down the drain. It had been two months since the last time I emptied the compost, when I was tidying up for a visit from Amy.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...