Is That Rain
​by Leesa Cross-Smith

PIN YOUR HAIR and put on the reddest lipstick and a little dress that makes you feel old-timey; extra-girly, like something blooming. Lean against the doorframe drinking ice clinky frontier whiskey in the yellow bug-light glow. Listen to the frogs and crickets out back, steam-pulsing like a machine. Let your welcome home lips stain the glass of his hot mouth. Remember you are a slug, leaving a slimy trail. Turn on the song. The one with the voices that sound like someone sweeping scraps of paper off of a dusty floor. In the kitchen, when he asks who's here when I'm not? pretend you don't hear him. When he asks it again and flick-lifts his shirt sleeve to scratch at the tight, muscled brown skin of his upper arm; his eyes, all rimmed with neon-pink – say is that rain and let your smeary mouth be his question mark. Now go over to the window and pull the curtain back to look at the dry deck, the dry grass, the dry beer bottles and dry ashtray leftovers from the night before. Good.

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Leesa Cross-Smith is a homemaker, a writer, an editor. She and her husband edit a literary magazine called WhiskeyPaper. Her work has appeared in places like Word Riot, Juked, Little Fiction, and Carve Magazine, among others. Find more at LeesaCrossSmith.com.

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