Alight
Some rogue cigarette flew into my eye. It was my second time ever in New York City. The ember sizzled. It was July. I screamed. Mia rushed to find a bathroom. We fled South Street Seaport and zigzagged the city’s shimmering expanse. My tears caught a glint of the bodies, the buildings. I mourned my sight. We were nineteen. We were alone. We had landed in the city after our father finally banished us from the house. He said we owed him an apology. We weren’t sure for what. We ducked into a pizza place. White lights bathed empty booths. An aproned elder lounged alone behind the counter. His chest was a crime scene of mangled tomatoes. He saw our panic and didn’t react, just sighed and pointed to the bathroom. Outside, the night hung sparse and shadowed. The sweet of roasted cashews wafted west. Inside, the tiny bathroom glowed with grime. Tile and quiet cocooned us. Mia set her hand on my shoulder. Who the fuck, she seethed, throws burning things? I hovered over the sink and rinsed my eye with the metallic tap. It stung with cold. We made our way out of the restaurant, giving the man profuse thanks. He did not acknowledge us. The light cloaked him. He looked damned and divine. The door dinged open, and the city swaddled us. We walked into the flickering night. Mia’s hot palm petalled my eye as it gushed with involuntary tears. We were alone. We had spent the summer floating between places that were not ours. Smoldering things kept accosting us. And there were things we did not tell each other. The seaport heaved at our backs, and the East River ebbed with secrets. We left the man behind us, alight and alone.
Leila Renee (@leila_rg) is a writer from Milwaukee, WI. She received the 2021 Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction and the Shirley Jackson Prize in Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Columbia Journal, Harvard University’s Transition Magazine, The Offing, Electric Literature, and more. She received her MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University.