• “Cold night?” He sits next to me.

    I can feel him. Smell him.

    “Yeah.”

    Our legs dangle carelessly off the bridge.

    The bridge over railroad tracks.

    Tracks with no trains.

    Trains with no tracks.

    “You shouldn’t be out here alone.” He says.

    We’re strangers.

    Foreign. Alien. Transient. Ghosts.

    But the smell of his cologne still makes me smile.

    “I know.”

    He sighs.

    His fingers entwine, barely.

    He’s thinking.

    I look up at the stars. The city around us blocks them out.

    They must feel so smothered, up there.

    “Are you lost?” He asks.

    “No.” I know exactly where I am, now.

    He goes silent again. Twiddles his thumbs.

    I wonder who actually does that, other than him.

    Thumb twiddling.

    How silly.

    “I’m sorry.”

    I don’t answer.

    His chin quivers.

    Anguish.

    “I’m sorry, for what I did to you.”

    He swallows.

    His thumbs keep going.

    Twiddle.

    Twiddle.

    But my hands are frozen with cold.

    “I know.”

    A car passes by on the road behind us.

    The light grows.

    It blinds.

    It leaves.

    There is no goodbye.

    “Where do we go from here?”

    His hands are still.

    In his sweater pockets.

    Warm.

    “Don’t think about it.”

    I stand up.

    I know my skirt is dirty.

    But I don’t care.

    “Just close your eyes and walk.”