once upon a time in now
by Harley Hill
It is all in the believing we tell each other, and in the telling, in the exchange of hot, moist whispers, mouth to mouth, lip to lip, we believe that our happiness will last every moment of now, and in the finger grip of now, in the now moment of believing, we grin with our cunts, we smile with nipples hard as erasers, and we make the universe bend its knee to us in our maddened joy and we make the universe bless us, anointing here, there, there and the moment stretches until it is big enough to hold us safe and strong and brave as we kiss goodbye on the stair to the subway, big enough to hold us sure, so sure, and even raucous, hormone-nervous high school students watching the two women kiss are stunned into smiling, surprised into cheering, and we hold the now to us, wrap ourselves cocoon close in the cloak of now-joy and we go to our homes that are not Our home but feel like our home with our cunts still smiling and our nipples still hard as erasers; it is all in the believing, we tell each other, but now is slippery, and now, our nows are halved and halved, nows, alone with our own midnight fingertips, nows, each with our own non-now other, and our grins slide off like Mardi Gras masks crushed in Lent's sunrise gutter and our erasers go thin and weary, rubbed so long and so hard against once upon a time dreams.
harley hill is a closet writer. She has no qualifications, except desire.