Cactus Wine

I will show up with a cactus and wine.

They will both be for you.

The cactus will be in a tiny ceramic pot and the wine will be in a glass bottle.

We will talk about 2016 and what our hair looked like when we were 20.

You will ask me about the books I’ve been reading lately and I will talk about them with short words that make it clear that I loved them all equally and the correct amount.

I will say things like, “The narrator spent all summer waiting for the weather to change and when it finally did she forgot to notice.”

I will ask you if you’ve ever been to the West coast and you’ll tell me a story about the time you tried scotch for the first time at your cousin’s wedding and woke up in your bridesmaid dress with a mug of stale cake in your hand.

I won’t talk about the cactus and neither will you because it is too early in the night to say out loud what we both know it reminds us of

(your ankle, my lips, your cuffed jeans, my lips, your other ankle).

In 2016 your cousin was single and I read, but I kept it to myself.

Madison Blask is a mostly-essayist, sometimes-poet, even-more-sometimes painter living in Upstate NY. She can be found on twitter @IamMadi_SON.