It was just so much easier then. Summer nights stretched out
like open road, there was always a party in someone's backyard
or light-filled kitchen, red solo cups in everyone's hands lubricated
conversation. You had been living with me since your mother and dad
turned you out. One night we stayed up talking endlessly, the way
we always could, after dancing with boundless energy in bars where
we were technically too young to be served. My brother's bedroom
was as he had left it before he went to boot camp. We laid on his bed,
looking up at a fishing net strung through with colored Christmas lights.

With soft specks of red and green and blue dancing
on our faces, you told me how your oldest sister's boyfriend
had been your first. He could see it in you, even as young
as you were. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to kiss a girl?
I said. I think you shrugged, Ok, why not. Your lips were soft and
wet and perfunctory, neither of us surprised when nothing
passed between us. You said you were hungry, and I was hungry too,
so we crept into my mother's kitchen and made ourselves french toast.
Cicadas trilled in the poplars. The cloud-lidded sky was just giving over to daybreak.

Laura Levesque grew up in Baltimore, MD. She earned her Bachelor’s in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. She has been published in Touch: The Journal of Healing, Montage, Mirage, Alphabet Soup, and others.