Fiction | December 01, 1991

One thing I know for true: I want to touch him.  I push my hands into my pockets, fists against my hipbones, so they do not move to feel his arm, his back, rub the nape of his neck.  I look at him for too long, and when he sees me, I look away, but not before I see him smile.

We are standing under the bridge at Damascus.  This is not the bridge whispered about by the grade nine cheerleaders in third period biology, where they come to rumple their clothes and moan and frustrate themselves and their boyfriends. This is the other bridge, the bridge by the old train bridge, the bridge where he comes with my brother and their crew, and they light fires and talk and act stupidly and take off their clothes and sail out onto the river in the rowboat that they dock in the bushes when they leave.