From the nook of the neck, distance installed the width of a Whirlpool or three.   Not even a sprint, yet a need to collect breaths like so many scattered toys—   the longest of pauses invites a tear to crack the shoulder like a cardamom pod   though one of us is more potent crushed.                                       ~   Make-up sex distilled into break-up sex. I stroke the salt slopes of his head. He comes up for air cuing me to say something selfish. Clocks everywhere and still don't know when it's over.

“ Didn’t know y ou were a towhead ,” I said , a bit irritated by the omission .  A young boy with curly ,  blond hair stared out from the glossy , slightly out-of-focus  p hotograph  I held , a fishing pole in his hand and baggy overalls hanging off his bare, freckled shoulders. Even at 9, Kaleb’s body tensed with the wiry muscles he’d grow into.  ​ “Yep,” Kaleb said. “ It t urned brown around  ten or eleven .” His rough hand rubbed my shoulder. The double bed creaked under us, echoed by the floorboards. The online ad for the bed and breakfast said it was quaint, bu t  even for north Louisiana , it was  more  rustic  than  we’d  expected .  Nothing more than a  double  bed,  a lone floor lamp,  an oversized armoire, and one of those old school, tube TVs on top of an army footlocker.  At least it fit our budget.  ​ I turned the crinkled photo over.  “ Don’t  know you as well as I thou...