“Reverie XI” by Bianca Spriggs

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By the time the barista passes your latte through the drive-thru window, you are in a bad way. It’s his fault. At first, he wanted to know whether you were moving in or out (on account of all the boxes in your backseat), but he did not believe the lie when you told him. He leaned from the window and casually crossed his hands at the wrist, then winked as though you were familiar, a co-conspirator to a crime which you’ve not yet committed. You could’ve just about amputated those veiny, elegant hands and placed them, clasped mid-grace, in a bell jar atop your nightstand. Instead, you clenched the wheel. You know he saw your bloody knuckles bulge through a shoddy bandage job. His eyes lingered there and you felt the sledgehammer of your pulse go all John Henry in your throat. If he knew to ask, you would confess everything, like how earlier, you enjoyed your flesh acting like living flesh for once, sizzled by the antiseptic’s sting sautéing your dermis shut. Instead of blood, he spoke about the weather and winked again and you grew brave, tested the limits of your wound, the web between your fingers stretching, protesting against new skin and your breath snagged in your windpipe like a screen-door slammed during a July storm. But then he looked away from you over his shoulder and you panicked. Stalled. Asked to make change. Oh, blessed, beautiful barista boy leaning in like a cosmic lover as though that narrow drive-thru window was a portal between dimensions. You know you’ve mistaken the sensation of your respective fingers brushing for two wayward planets going about the business of colliding. You’re in a bad way alright. A bad way. And this is how you know you won’t be back for just the coffee anymore.

-Bianca Spriggs

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