Breadcrumbs

KIM DIETZ

The sky was orange as the sun set over the carnival. Pink sprouted up from the horizon as a glint of white from the wing of a seagull caught my eye, slowly tempering a landing from the gusty winds to a piling out by the shoreline.

What was I doing here again?

The breeze on the Ferris wheel softly blanketed my legs, blowing tufts of loose hair out of my face, while the anxiety beckoned ever so much within my mind. Burnt orange dispersed through the clouds, the smell of popcorn filling the air, and the stickiness of sweat and sugar clinging to the backs of my thighs on this plastic seat urged me to release them from their restless prison.

And you, looking so distantly away from me. Wishing you were somewhere. I tried not to look. I found you this way so many times recently, falling into deep pitfalls of silence and never fully recovering from the underlying current of our company.

"What is it that you want me to say?" you remarked when I finally admitted to it.

And the fact is you do deserve someone so much better than me, but you can't see it for some reason. Only I do.

"That you forgive me...?" I cautioned with a cheeky half grin.

"Unbelievable," were the words I had heard you repeat to yourself over the following weeks. Yet still, you never left.

I think it's finally sunk its way deep within your core, here, at the carnival in the meditation of the sunset, hollowing you out like a flute to be muted by the underbelly of the earth. I can see the reflection of the sky's vibrant colors in your eyes, and wonder if the colors will internalize and cause a channel for your anger to flow outward unto me. I've defeated you, I can tell, and I realize that I've been here before. That I'm doing it again.

Bob Raymonda

The late August evening air was 10 degrees colder with windchill, but that didn’t bother Marcus or Teddy. The two sat at the top of an old Ferris wheel, suspended for a moment as Clyde let on another couple. There was a small space between the two of them, but their hands hung at their sides and their pinkies grazed ever so slightly. Marcus felt electrified. He hadn’t been this close to Teddy since they were standing in line to get their photo IDs taken at the beginning of the summer.

The sky was burnt orange as the sun set over the carnival. Teddy stared out into nothing and let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t think I can do it, Marcus.”

Marcus pulled back his hand and dug his too-long fingernails into his palm. He glared at the back of Teddy’s caramel neck and wondered what it would be like to kiss it. “Do what?”

Teddy turned to face Marcus and caught his glare. The Ferris wheel started with a creak. “You know what.”

The ride was in full swing now after Clyde let on the last of their other co-workers. It was the end-of-summer party, and the park was already closed for the year. Teddy would be going home to Atlanta, and Marcus would stick around here and go back to working nights at his mother’s diner. It seemed unfair.

They both wore the red-and-white pinstripe T-shirts of a games employee. They’d spent the whole summer in stalls across from each other, competing to see who could wrangle in the most customers over the bullhorn. Teddy always won, but that didn’t stop Marcus from goading him on, claiming he was the inferior.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Marcus lied.

Teddy grabbed Marcus’ hand and pleaded for him to look into his eyes. “She’d know. She always knows.”

Teddy’s mother was a Christian, and she had no patience for what she called his “affliction." She’d caught him with another boy at the end of the summer last year. He never told Marcus about it, but all the park employees knew. She had the boy fired, telling their boss that he had been harassing Teddy for weeks, even though that was far from the truth. Word spread fast — stay away from the boy with the shy brown eyes.

“Word spread fast — stay away from the boy with the shy brown eyes.”

The ride sped up as Clyde depressed the lever further than he normally allowed it to go. Any other day of the year and he’d be fired for this, but at the end-of-the-year party, anything goes. Marcus slid closer to Teddy by the sheer force of gravity. Their thighs tensed up and Marcus could feel all the blood rushing from his head to other, more urgent vestiges of himself. He grabbed Teddy’s face and kissed him hard on his unseasonably chapped lips. He didn’t care if he never saw the boy again, or if he lost his job because of it. And in that moment, as the sun set and summer ended, he thought that maybe the Ferris wheel would never stop spinning. And that would be a good thing, because he was exactly where he wanted to be.

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