GO

by DAN CRAWLEY

I tell Liv about my new clothes. “If I was ready to go, I wouldn’t care about torn waistbands, am I right? Or holes in my socks?”

I tell Dove about the smaller size of my sweatpants and boxers. “But they fit much better. A wonderful comfort.”

I tell Bobby about my new tube socks. “We can go play tennis. Like we used to at the junior college after midnight. Remember the…,” I falter. “Remember the courts encircled by pines?”

Eternal evergreen fragrance? Bugs swarmed the tops of the bright poles? Bats swooped, climbed, vanished? Lamps clicked off every hour like clockwork? Button we searched for like blindfolded hostages in a dark cave?

I tell them all, “And how we brought back the light. That easy.”

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DAN CRAWLEY is the author of Straight Down the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, 2019) and The Wind, It Swirls (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2021). His writing appears or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Lost Balloon, New World Writing, Atticus Review, and elsewhere.

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