"Circling" by Leslie Lindsay
Eliza Fixler | For better, for worse
He came to me after a long life. Everyone else had died,
and I’d figured this might happen. “Happy birthday,” he said,
appearing at the threshold. We’d lived here together for years.
I’d not been in the habit of locking the door then, either.
“Happy birthday,” I replied, in reflexive acknowledgement
of our erotic coincidence. It was decades (five) since I’d seen him,
but you wouldn’t have known it, the way he slid through
the maze of my things–coupon catalogs and notebooks, empty
cardboard Christmas boxes, pens–and found his familiar seat
on the new couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table,
and didn’t heckle me about the door, there was no need.
I didn’t pester him about leaving; we were dying. I imagined
how he must see me, an old woman with a younger one inside.
He’d trace my varicose veins, put his cold winter nose to my
flabby inner thighs, and nod approvingly. I was always to his taste,
the problem wasn’t that. And so in dying, I welcomed him
as we’d always known I would. Into my arms and into my bed,
then onto the porch for coffee with the cicadas. He told me
he’d been with his next woman twenty years, how it was good,
but not so good you wanted to bash your head in. I said I understood,
told him I’d raised chickens, and other peoples’ children,
but still seen a little of the world. He said he’d been to Greece
and Egypt, Chile and New Zealand, seen them all through my eyes,
that he’d kept a notebook of funny things to share when we met
again, but lost it. For what it’s worth, I believed him on all accounts.
I poured more coffee, though it was night, and our aging nerves
had thinned to strands, and he offered me his life, from memory.
and I’d figured this might happen. “Happy birthday,” he said,
appearing at the threshold. We’d lived here together for years.
I’d not been in the habit of locking the door then, either.
“Happy birthday,” I replied, in reflexive acknowledgement
of our erotic coincidence. It was decades (five) since I’d seen him,
but you wouldn’t have known it, the way he slid through
the maze of my things–coupon catalogs and notebooks, empty
cardboard Christmas boxes, pens–and found his familiar seat
on the new couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table,
and didn’t heckle me about the door, there was no need.
I didn’t pester him about leaving; we were dying. I imagined
how he must see me, an old woman with a younger one inside.
He’d trace my varicose veins, put his cold winter nose to my
flabby inner thighs, and nod approvingly. I was always to his taste,
the problem wasn’t that. And so in dying, I welcomed him
as we’d always known I would. Into my arms and into my bed,
then onto the porch for coffee with the cicadas. He told me
he’d been with his next woman twenty years, how it was good,
but not so good you wanted to bash your head in. I said I understood,
told him I’d raised chickens, and other peoples’ children,
but still seen a little of the world. He said he’d been to Greece
and Egypt, Chile and New Zealand, seen them all through my eyes,
that he’d kept a notebook of funny things to share when we met
again, but lost it. For what it’s worth, I believed him on all accounts.
I poured more coffee, though it was night, and our aging nerves
had thinned to strands, and he offered me his life, from memory.
Eliza Fixler is a therapist and poet currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Previous works have been published at Chaotic Merge, GASHER, Beaver Magazine, Querencia Press, and others. You can follow her writing at @elizafixlerpoetry on Instagram or Bluesky.
Leslie Lindsay’s work has been published in various literary and art journals, including: Up the Staircase Quarterly (cover art), Another Chicago Magazine (ACM), Wild Roof Journal, Spring-Summer, Brushfire Arts & Literature, The Closed Eye Open, Tiferet Journal, Mud Season Review, Western Michigan Review, Fall 2023, and On the Seawall, Model Home: A Study Under Compression, a photo essay in miniature, April 2023.
