Air Kissing on Mars

She Is Awakened by a Hair

18 She Is Awakened by a Hair She’s awakened by a hair in her mouth. It’s not enough to kill her, no that would take a locomotive crashing through her window, a train way off track thundering through her bedroom, the moon on its back, simply a hair stuck to the roof of her mouth, her tongue working to pry it loose. Whose hair is it, anyway? Is it the same hair she saw floating in the bowl of vanilla gelato she ate before bed? Could it be this hair belonged to that mechanic she once knew— they made out on the carousel swan, kissed til their lips bled—surely a hair or two had been dislodged, might have settled inside the cave of her throat, only to resurface as a wish? Is it possible the hair was placed in her mouth by a higher power, a mysterious donor, to remind her that dreams are fleeting, even in sleep? No. 19 No. She realizes this is the same strand she twisted ’round her tongue one night when she was young, sitting straight up in bed, shadows from her closet moving in beside her, as she slowly closed the knot making a promise to herself she still struggles to forget. ...