Familiarity

It was fall in the South.

The first bit of frost...the first bits of a morning where your breath would cloud and the cold of a car seat was palpable.

But she knew the backroads like the back of her hand...an easy turn of the wheel as she drove home.

What was new was him.

She was avoiding this collision...the old and the new confronting each other like the spill of waves on a beach...intractable...inevitable.

She knew the smell of the inside of the house like a scent long burned into her...she knew the porch that was just an open enclave between the portions of the home screened in with a fire place was where the most open conversations happened...

The smoke of long dead fires filled her lungs...she remembered talks and laughs...her father and his voice.

And now a new voice was in her world...different.

It wasn't bad...it was just new.

How would she introduce...how would she invite?

She drove the back roads and she wanted a cigarette...she wondered if the store was open.  If she could pull in, leave the car running and go in, pull out some dollars and buy some smokes.

She did.

The white wash of the lights of the store were blinding...against the orange of the evening...

She sat in her car with the window down...smoking.

Wondering how she could introduce the new world. 

Hey, he said...sitting next to her.

She turned.

He was there, the smoke around him, like a bit of a crown.

He was a frame...a shape.  Like when you buy cut-outs for Christmas cookies his shape imprinted upon her heart, creating things she could bake...could linger upon...she could put some colors and and sugars and it would be sweet.

But when he kissed her it was the commingling of smoke and candy...her heart was wondering what was in the past and the newness of the reveal.

She laid back in the car and watched the dashboard lights.  They looked like the color in the sky.