When she whispered he would shake off all particles he’d lost between Tulsa and Smithtown. He would wrap his body around hers tightly to keep her from falling away in sleep. She had told him things had changed over night, her smell, hair color, her eyes and how they shifted from the left to the right when reading great novels. She was Japanese or Siberian. She was no longer from this place in America where her mother once cooked her quiche and muffins of fruit. The night before, she revealed stories of insects crawling up her spine and through her heart like magnifying glasses prodding all secrets from her being. There is nothing to hide any more. Our secrets are lost. They have been taken by wind and the sound of wind to Punjab or Moscow, far away from here.
Let’s go retrieve them, she said with a one sided smile, tugging quite lightly on his pinky finger, which seemed to grow longer each day she was by his side.
He resisted her; his finger grew. He retaliated; his finger grew. Longer than a garden hose, his pinky could lasso large mammals from the sea.
He thought of sea mammals and mammals that suffer from great depression. One time he had read an article about aromatherapeutic treatments for mammals. He sniffed the air inside his bedroom. It was stale, but alive. He had waited too long to do his laundry.
She pulled his pinky finger. It stretched to the window then crawled outside, piercing the thorn of one freshly budded rosebush.
His lips brushed the tip of her eyelash. Butterflies batting secrets back into the wind. Though he was terrified, he listened.