Photo by Christian Lucas on Unsplash
by Lisa Thornton
Say you had gone to him, that boy across the street from the house you lived in before your parents split up, the one you could see from your bedroom working on that black Firebird in his driveway, the one you could hear blasting “Appetite for Destruction” from the boombox in his garage. What if you had walked out your front door, past the basketball hoop and the elm tree you used to climb to take Polaroids of yourself when you first started wearing make-up and said something like “Nice jeans” while not looking directly at the acid-washed pair glued to his body so tightly he may have had to lie on his bed to pull them up like that woman in the Levi’s commercial. What if he had looked at you for the first time or at least for the first time as something other than the girl across the street and set down his wrench and wiped his greasy hands on a scrap of yellow shop cloth and then what if you, without glancing behind you to see if anyone was looking, had sashayed right up to him and put your hands into his long, curly, presumably permed, Poison-inspired rocker hair and run your fingers through it until you reached his chest. And then what if he had said “Get in” and you had jumped into the passenger seat and the interior of that Firebird had set the tone for your whole sexuality not some stained futon on the floor of somebody’s sister’s apartment after the Homecoming dance your junior year with The Smiths complaining in the background. What if Axl Rose had welcomed you to the jungle instead of you just sitting there, elbows on the windowsill, chin on your hands, waiting patiently for someone to find you.
Lisa Thornton is a writer and nurse. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She lives at the edge of a windy field and can also be found on Bluesky and Instagram @thorntonforreal.
