Postscript
- Jun 16, 2023
- 2 min read
by Sydney Vance
House party high, the humid Oklahoma July lurched us into someone else’s one AM dark, some driveway full of cars, echo of empty sound. My menthol cigarette in flame at the wrong end. You handed me another — the first I ever smoked the whole way. And we talked like friends talk when they smoke anything together outside, in someone’s parents’ garage, backyard, or broken porch swing. My boyfriend
doesn’t like me, I confessed bemoaning my own gullible woe. But I didn’t know. Inhaled then boldened enough to kiss you or try. I think you just laughed, which only embarrasses me a little. I was just so young, so stranger to living consequence. Besides, I couldn’t help it — we just breathed them in and in and in, always in all those Friday and Saturday moons in excess. One or both of us osmosed, and I want to put everything here, the baby and the drinking problem, here where these artifacts can exist in one membrane, the same I’ll use to confess I was awake when you whispered goodnight in my ear, kissed my forehead, left.
Some only love who they see themselves within. Before I even knew it I knew I’d remember you for loving steady what I hate in me, those ugly things it would’ve killed me to find one day growing, grinning, inhaling with the same high school seniors in the suburb of three- car garages littered with broken darts, Jack and coke sticky on the heels — it would’ve killed me to wake up one morning and find the same ugly thriving, well and alive in you.
Sydney Vance resides just outside of Oklahoma City and serves as a reader for the journal Petrichor. She received her M.A. in creative writing from The University of Central Oklahoma in December 2022. Her work has previously appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Redivider, and Rogue Agent, among other outlets, and is forthcoming elsewhere.
