Matt Chapuran

By Matt Chapuran

This began as such an innocent flirtation. 

I don’t know how this got so out of hand. We’d see each other at the top of Knott’s Hill, where everyone would bring their children for sledding. You would nod a greeting at parents you didn’t know, maybe linger at the top of the hill long enough to exchange names, but I’ve never known anything to grow more personal than that. A collegial atmosphere carried everyone as they figured out their different combinations and challenges. What if we send two sleds down together, the riders holding hands? What if we send three sleds, or maybe even four in a train, your feet tucked in my lap, me holding your ankles tight?

What if we went down together, you on my lap?

Pure as the snow that fell overnight, we’d all think, and then one child’s nose would start to run, or a mitten would be lost, or after one of the sleds cartwheeled at the bottom of the hill, a child would begin to complain of snow trapped in between the boot and the sock.

We can pledge fidelity to our lovers and we can express tolerance for our neighbors, but the older I get, the harder it becomes to extend patience for the children of others. The weakest, the ones quickest to exclaim that they didn’t like the cold, that they hated the snow, they were the first to leave, and while nobody would dare to utter the words, all of us were grateful for the subtraction, for having to force a smile for the shortcomings of a strange family.

Honestly. Who doesn’t love the snow?

During the breaks from sledding, you and all the families would build your walls, and perhaps more shockingly to me, fashion replicas of yourselves, decorating the new arrivals with scarves from around your necks, the hats straight from your heads.

Later, as the afternoon started to yawn and give way to dusk, the families would drop away, one at a time. There might be a scheduled music lesson for one child, or perhaps the bribe of hot cocoa would seduce away another. They would drip and drop. Even your family, it was your wife who was the one who finally surrendered.

“But I’m having a good time,” you complained as she gathered your children, all of them looking much more like you than her, just as mine so closely held my resemblance. “Besides,” you said, “I want to finish what I started.”

“Suit yourself,” she said. I doubt she recognized the attraction that was growing. I find it somewhat insulting that she never considered me a threat, and yet here I stand before you, nearly naked and braving the cold.

You shaped me with your bare hands, pulling off your gloves with your teeth, evident that you lost control of your fingers, you weren’t the master of your touch.

You gave me this shape. You gave me these breasts and this smile. My arms are tiny but strong enough to hold you and once we’re alone, I thrill to your daring to take me and press your lips against the stones that comprise my mouth. 

The moment melts me. And yet, deep in my chest, there’s a snowball that’s compressed to ice where a heart should be. I know that we can’t keep meeting like this. I know that you are simply caught up in the moment. I know that you’ll never leave her for me.

Above us, the sun disappears and gives way to a moon, so full that it’s pregnant with magic, capable of making the unreal tangible. Into the ears that you fashioned for my ears you whisper, “You should see the stars.”

If only I had a neck that I could crane. My eyes are frozen for you.