Go ahead, she said and put her hands out. I don’t remember the quality of her voice or which of us did the tying, me or M, but we did it and she laid there in the grass of the unmowed yard under the night sky with us. And I don’t remember how the tickling started but I remember it was playful to begin with, but like a delicate fabric that gets stretched too tight, the play began to tear and open up. At moments it was too much and then it would go back to play. And I remember her body, soft and full in the dark, twisting beneath our hands that were tickling one moment and poking another. She was like a wave with swells that we were creating, complete with moments of intensity and rest. I remember her laughing and teasing us. I remember telling her we wanted to take a look. I remember her saying no. And we didn’t. But it was exciting and different and I remember thinking does she really mean no and pressing a bit to find out and knowing there were moments of terror for her and stopping and wondering is this alright, have I done something wrong, did this go too far, is it me or M or her. And while for all the talk of taking a look, and tickling that was too much, and rolling and touching, we all stayed clothed as we were and when we came to a stop and lay quietly together, she finally said, c’mon, untie me, I want to go home. And we untied her and I remember M walked through the bushes with her and got his bike and walked her down the road, past the fields to her house, where her dad was still working in the white light of the open garage on the old Jaguar he’d bought a year ago.

The next day, when it was light, I remember looking at the side yard where we’d been and seeing the grass laid flat in a big area where we’d been.

Every once in a long while, if I go back home, I will see her at a family thing and she says hi and we talk, but in the back of my mind I feel that patch of grass floating and a brief flash of her under us comes to me and I see the part of myself that I am afraid of, looking out at me, wanting out from the place I have put it. And I go cold with the possibility of being the one who did the thing to me that no-one should do to another.

And I cannot believe it is still there.