Member-only story
For Min Yoongi
Black nylon stretches across the sky. Where it tears, the stars shine through, peering at humanity with their golden and crimson eyes. The old man on the park bench beside me grips his cane with white knuckles and stares back at those stars. His jaw clenches like he’s holding a decades-long grudge. Maybe he senses my awe, because he looks at me just then, but the malice I expect in his watery brown eyes is something entirely different: a little fear, a little want. A sprinkle of oncoming peace?
The two of us have our own staring contest, and then he sighs as heavily as if the world depends on him.
Maybe it does. This man feels otherworldly. I don’t even remember him sitting down beside me. Me, who came here for… something.
Tension eases from his body a fragment at a time, and I could swear a new star glows brighter with each piece. I can’t look away.
Crickets serenade us all at once. The old man taps his cane in rhythm to a song lost on my ears.
The stars turn their attention to him, so I do again as well.
Before my eyes, with every tap on his cane, the man loses wrinkle after wrinkle. His hair shimmers like waving grass in the moonlight, leeching darkness from the sky. A smile forms on his reddening lips. As he tips his head back, those lips part and his throat stretches, beautiful and…
