10/27/10

NOODLE SOUP
By Michael B. Tager


“Noodle soup,” she says, breathing into his mouth, smile slow and full of dreams. Her smile is porcelain; her eyes are pale green. In the shadows they blend and disappear. Staring into them feels like coming home.

“Noodle soup,” she says again. She is reading something in his face. A tightness. A drawing of breath. She senses the confusion – a weather sense, a trick knee - and reaches out one small-boned hand. It shakes when it touches his cheek, rough with a week’s worth of dark stubble. His breath is sour.

“What’s wrong?” Her smile fades, just a touch bending the corners of her mouth. Not a full smile, no, but the light he warms himself by is still there.

“Noodle soup?” he asks. His voice is rough from lack of use. The light between them casts bars on the royal sheets.

Her eyes narrow and with slender fingers, she pinches, ever so gently, that skin above his waist. That bit of belly she lays her head on that he’s so shy of. He jumps and swats at her hands, as if it were a bug. “You aren’t hearing me, are you?” She pinches him again, her lip caught between ever so slightly crooked teeth. The front tooth has a tiny chip. This time he feels a sharp prick and he squirms, his eyes opening from half-lids and twilight escaping.

“I said,” she repeats, laughing, turning over and stretching her arms above her head. The sun shines through fine hair on her wrist, bleached by the sun. He can see each individual strand. Sometimes, he traces a slow finger down a path, carving a route. Her voice is like bells. “I love you, too.”


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Mike Tager hails from Baltimore, MD. He likes Buffy, Justin Timberlake and writing.