Hayden
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2 min read
by Adrienne Marie Barrios
When I think of your name, it is a breath on my lips, a whisper, something not quite formed: Hayden. Your name is a promise I broke at least three times. Maybe I’ll break it forever. Your name is an echo from your own throat when I tell you I’ve applied my lipstick three times now, four, and it’s still not quite right. I can’t keep my hand steady. Deep breaths, darling. Your name is the way I don’t stop as I drive across the old Lake Sammamish bridge, keep driving when I see James and Colin fixing a tire on that old rusty car. James looks so frail, the wind might carry him, I might be able to hold him down. But I want to get to you more. Your name is matching purple funeral clothes in the parking lot behind the Issaquah Community Center, bones jutting from ribcages long before fat settled in, lines etched in a face dipped in the sorrow of Eric’s death. Your name is a steady gaze around the bar where most of us drink too much, hoping to forget — a steady hand to hold me up. Your name is where I laid my body next to yours, where something was born, something of need that only loss can bring, the inevitable abdication of control, our lips pressing together in Jessica’s bed as I breathe you in. Does this feel good, darling? Your name is the way you ask if it’s okay as I shudder, whimper, your hand running up the inside of my thigh, sliding inside, an impossible truth, the words little more than a breath in my ear, a question for which you already know the answer.
Adrienne Marie Barrios has work appearing or forthcoming in The Dillydoun Review, Drunk Monkeys, superfroot mag, Autofocus Lit, and Sledgehammer Lit. She is editor-in-chief for Reservoir Road Literary Review and edits short stories and award-winning novels. Find her online at adriennemariebarrios.com.
