while everyone sleeps

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The Friend's Wife

Your friend told you his wife was working in the Park for the summer and that you should visit, but now you've been drinking all night with her in the dented trailer where she bunks and after a meal of spaghetti and another red wine you are down at the river with her where the true darkness cloaks you from the deeper world and she says let's swim and before you know it she is taking off her clothes and her body is a naked ghost wading out into the water and you follow, glad the moonless night is so deep she can not see who you really are, but then you think she might not really care because as you float with her in the silky water, you talk about the Milky Way like it is a river you see every day and that this is normal until you get out and the summer heat keeps you from shivering and the moment comes when you are standing close to her with the cold smooth stones of the river bank pressing into your naked soles and the pause comes and the door opens and you think of leaning forward across a threshold you will never be able to return from and so you don't and instead resign yourself to years of wondering.