Eli Winter (otherwise untitled)

I remember walking Eli halfway down the street in the wintertime, my Birkenstock clogs crunching footprints into the snow that was a thickly packed layer of diamonds over the cement. The air smelled different in winter, and that smell alone made me think of my first love and sigh. At midnight the moon hung high and bright, the clouds only a few feet above my head. In the morning before school, I would walk down to meet Eli at her house for carpool, and I would smoke a cigarette on the way, my fingertips magenta and wizened when I could no longer feel them. I would stop before the evergreen at the corner of Eli’s lawn, lest her parents see me from their living room window, and I would stare up at the sky of seven-thirty in the morning. My mind would wander back to my first love, and I would exhale smoke along with my own breath. Those were the days when I still spoke of him in every word I said.