Tightrope
By Haley M. Stevens
The log cabin is reticent but for the crinkling fire. The red brick, the earnest timber, all ablaze in its afterglow. It’s August. Night. Outside, buzzing bugs headbutt window screens. Though they know their efforts are futile, fire is something they’ll happily die for. Flame is never a flame when you live but a flickering moment; it’s love. Pursuing it is the only way to live.
In the indoor hammock, her between my knees, rocking to wisps and creaks, I open our book to the most recent page. Her sweet coconut hair is wet and drying against my T-shirt. When I speak, her callused fingers trace little shapes against my forearm. She blinks and listens and promises not to fall asleep.
My words are a tightrope, stretched above the hammock, the cabin, the stars. I’m an acrobat wobbling in a fragile fog. My foot slips. I fall—
She sets her hand on mine, and I stop; this feeling of home bubbles like a cauldron. We’d been together eight months, but she’s never called me “girlfriend.” I want to hear her thoughts—to ask her, to make it to the other side, to know what love is. But this—us—will end soon. I’m leaving—
She tilts her chin and kisses me. Is it enough to loiter here, without knowing how she feels? I’ve never been in love, but I can pretend; I fall through the fog to kiss her back, scathed like a moth who found her flame. Happy.
Haley M. Stevens, a recipient of the 2023 Dr. Frank Hrisomalos Memorial Award in Literature, is a Fulbright English Lecturer at “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galați, Romania, where her teaching includes American literature and culture, intercultural communication, creative writing, and feminist studies. Graduating with a MA in English-Creative Writing from Ball State University, her research focuses on Jewish folklore, climate fiction writing, and creative pedagogy; her work appears in Black Horse Review and River Teeth Revisited.