my sweet, sweet boy (a haibun)

was walking around Forest park in a lonely loop listening
to the casual jokes of Whad’Ya know radio that make him 
feel like a kid again, thank God, because he needs that, to
feel like a kid from time to time. i wasn’t there for that 
memory & many others, like ice skating tournaments, nose 
leaking, skin aflame with the cold, or sitting alone in his dad’s
office at the hospital, reading books with a full bladder, but i 
ask God, what did my sweet, sweet boy smell like when he 
finished those walks? did he shower right after? or could you 
still smell the wet mud on his shoes & the fragile flecks of dead
leaves that adorned his head & shoulders? once, we stopped 
under a streetlight in a dark corner of Hampden on a warm 
night where there should’ve been more people but there 
weren’t & i looked at him & he looked at me & i fought 
gravity tooth, nail & other metaphors from forcing my knee 
down on the pavement to ask a question we both already knew
the answer to. i told him of that memory & he didn’t remember
but he wishes he could remember that & many other things better. 
i told him he must remember those moments, just not in the 
way that he thinks, & we fell asleep somewhere between 
skepticism & hope. i wonder if our dreams whisper to each 
other in the night because we always wake up so groggy, 
like we never slept at all. but when we walk down the street & 
his pale fingers flex the moment my hand leaves my pocket 
                                                                                 
                                                                                  i know all of his
                                                                                  memories, as he does mine
                                                                                  chiming yes, yes, yes

Julia Gerhardt is a writer from Los Angeles, now living in Baltimore.  She was nominated for the Best Microfiction Anthology 2020 and Best Small Fictions Anthology 2020. She has previously been published in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Umbrella Factory, The Airgonaut, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cease, Cows, Literary Orphans, Rogue Agent, Flash Fiction Magazine, Monkeybicycle, and others.  Her work is forthcoming in the Eastern Iowa Review, fresh.ink, Moonpark Review, and Sea Foam Mag.  She is currently working on her first novel.  

A Song for Julia