Dragon’s Milk
by Logan Pitsenberger
We waited for him with two yolks hissing and the redolence of cheese,
charred on my frypan’s bottom, wafting. Sid scribbled at the table
hieroglyphics of biochemistry. Night shuttered our curtainless window. But
soft white lights, taped above chipped cabinets, the clock with its minute
hand stuttering between 5:07 and 5:08, and the lintel to our bathroom,
illumined us: small, stranded. He entered, an exit. He passed, corpselike,
the living room. He passed uncoupled shoes, the television, and shelves
stocked with ramen. He paused. Thin fingers splayed over his nose, eyes,
mouth, and ragged mustache. Peter moaned, then his long torso
expanded and contracted like a sump pump. Sid rose and touched Peter’s
shoulder. I turned the burner off. Peter hugged Sid, then Sid retrieved
tissues from our bathroom. Peter hugged me next. “Daphne,” he
whispered. “It was horrible. Horrible, all of it. I messed it up, man.” He
squeezed, hard. “I messed up.” Sid’s tissues dissolved like clouds over
water. Peter slumped to tile. I struck open the last Dragon’s Milk on the
counter, nicking beige. “Please, take it.” Peter preferred lighter fare, Blue
Moon and Pabst Blue Ribbon, but what else was I to do? His lips kissed
tilted glass. Dragon’s Milk would transmute into a sea of tears, into pastel
beer dripping through pastel mustache and pastel jaw—blurred, as
Redon’s flower clouds, the boat heading nowhere at all.