Back then I never thought men could talk for hours on end in the darkness of a parked car. We talked as if it would be the first and last time. The only light coming out of a fifth floor apartment window, silhouette of a cat mystifying the moment. Your car smelled of cigarettes, as did your fingers and mine when I took your smoking hand, rubbing and rubbing as if to straighten your love line. Knowing our hearts were weak from the false starts of first love. That painful swell of hope. We talked of love lessons wasted on parents more focused on the shallow ends. We shared the songs that first introduced us to love, the songs that mimicked our heartbreak and still hummed once we were happy. But that night we fought to hold on to a spell we knew worked only on paper or in prayer. You suggested The Melrose next, “our place” for a Farmer’s Breakfast and bottomless cups of coffee and I, smoking one of your cigarettes, said yes.

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Tiffany Sciacca is an ever-emerging poet, newly attached to Flash Fiction. Past works have appeared in Local News: Poetry About Small Towns and Luna Luna Magazine where she is also part of the staff.

Photography by: Frederik Højfeldt Nielsen