Flood: A Very Short Story About Love

The river water had just begun to sag off from the edges of the sidewalk, and she took my hand like it was the handle for a blob of cotton candy, as if she’d rather not get her mitten sticky.

But it’s too late for that, I told her, not sure if she had read my thoughts. She looked at me, confused.

I trudged on, snow crunching like potato chips beneath my feet, convinced that she was playing a game with me. One of those insidious mind games deciphered in the books of R.D. Laing or Dr. Seuss. I can’t remember which. And that is what I’ve heard, anyway. From someone who had spoken to someone else who knew someone who had read at least a few of the paragraphs by one or both of the aforementioned authors.

None of this has been confirmed, I continued in my monologue. Besides that, there is nothing you can do to stop my sweat from meeting first-hand your sweat. If we touch, it’s all over.

Then it’s over, she said, because we’re touching.

That was logic that I could not refute. I let go of her hand, but we didn’t leave each other’s side. We were like two boats escorting each other through the lighthouse-less night, talking to each other through an imaginary phone of invisible cups and see-through string. Sometimes the connection was a little scratchy, but we tried our best, while the sun and moon argued about who cut in front of whom, while the crickets ticked off the lone box on their to-do list.