by Sara Estes

Amileah is remembering Park’s face, the lines near his eyes, the freckles, his beard, and then down to the soft curves of his body lying supine on the bed. You can’t take it all in at once. That’s why it takes so long—so many days and so many nights spent with the one you love to feel the slightest bit satiated.

For them, it is only ever one night, then a deafening gap of months. The moment Park leaves her apartment, the image of him starts falling away; pieces follow him out the door when he goes and she cannot get them back no matter how hard she tries.

Still, she embarks on the endless looping march backward in time, trying to preserve some of the details. How exactly did his voice sound when he said “Do you mind the walk?” or “Have you heard of Oblivion?” or “That’s the tamale guy.” She cannot hear it. She tries to remember how his mouth looked drinking whiskey out of a tiny red straw at the Empty Bottle, but she cannot see it and so wonders how his hair looked when he rolled over in bed and eased his left leg on top of her thigh but she can’t see it and she can’t retrieve all these things anymore, except his navy blue underwear as he stood at the bathroom sink, and, yes, of course, she knows exactly how his hair felt when she touched it before she got up to get a glass of water from the kitchen—the inconceivable softness. She holds out her hand and brushes her palm with the tip of her hair and it is not the same.

Sara Estes a writer and editor living in Nashville, TN. Her work has been featured in The Los Angeles Review, The Bitter Southerner, The Citron Review, Hyperallergic, Oxford American, BookPage, Filling Station, Burnaway, Number, Chapter 16, Empty Mirror, Waxing and Waning, The Tennessean, Nashville Scene, and more.