We agreed on Halloween cookies
and mint chocolate chip ice-cream
for dessert, but I ran back to the freezer
when your next text said you liked Neapolitan
too. We ate brown Japanese curry
from a cube and threw out a backyard blanket
beneath the salt-speck stars and you leaned over
to poke my face with a blade of grass
and closed your eyes to laugh
when I told you I once slept on a hard hospital floor,
how the doctor opened the door
on my foot. We were so close, I could feel our lives
folding together like curry in the pot
then into your spoon, its taste salty and so fat
with the future I forgot about the ice-cream
and cookies in your fridge, or the red wine
on the counter, or the ribbons of air floating
with your breath wrapped in mine. There was so much
I missed, too busy watching the glint
of stars pressed to our skin in this lifetime
of sky, and what were we but two little bits
of taste on its tongue.
Josiah Nelson is an MFA in Writing student and sessional lecturer at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in San Antonio Review, Arboreal Literary Magazine, spring magazine, Fractured Lit, and The Rumpus. He likes thrift stores, slow cinema, and cardigans. He lives in Saskatoon.
Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson
Vast 