I think there might be something between us. I can't stop staring at it. It grows new arms each morning, which nowadays look more like fingered tree branches.

I usually see it among the storm of lockers before I sense your presence—and it's always right there, flying at our perfect middle point. Sometimes, I'll catch you looking in my direction—your mind clearly on the ceiling, a light of its own—and it makes me believe that you see it as I do.

Often, I wish you and I could be the same invisible.

I remember our summer church camp, my second rhythm waiting for my roommate's every snore, keeping watch of the hallway as my hand shivered and shivered between my legs. You can't touch a repressed motherfucker on the neck like that, I had been thinking, I remember—and I'd stared at our shared shame while I'd pictured, still and unstill, longer and harder, that hot touch.

The being was looking at me, too, from its spot in the hall (you know, with all of its hovering eyes), and somehow, that didn't feel weird. I think it's been a privilege to see it, at any point, and especially that night. I haven't read all the after-school Bible that I've claimed, I know, but I do know the forms of the Old Testament angels, and I can tell we have our own.

More than anything, I remember my gasp to the ceiling the moment that it started down the hallway. I still see the way that it moved without pause, and in my direction.

You and I were somehow never caught, in the many, many moments following; still, I do think that we gave a hell of a performance between the wings.

____

Pascale is Editor-in-Chief of Wrongdoing Magazine and an Editor at a few other publications, including CHEAP POP and Walled Women Magazine. She’s also Staff Contributor for The Aurora Journal and has placed work in Eclectica Magazine, Maudlin House, BlazeVOX, Witch Craft Magazine, and many others. She has a BAH from Queen’s University, and she is working on a budding book series. You can read more about her at pascalepotvin.com or @pascalepalaces on Twitter.