Evelyn Frankforter

I see the movie theater in dreams. I keep it alive there, a memorial not only for a place beloved, but also for myself. In dreams, it’s netted in dotted, symmetrical lights. Lights that gleam and reflect like stars from the center fountain outside. A fountain that never starves, is never hungry, because I feed it well. I feed it my wishes, worries, and the thoughts that are best kept submerged in secrecy at the bottom of its reservoir. Every hour, the fountain takes these secrets and it reaches towards the sky. It takes the prying eyes and launches them up. From the ground, and its beam of crystal water seems to kiss the moon. I always hoped—or begged—it would leave those secrets there. Far away, where I could only reminisce by straining to look up.
In the shadow of the fountain, we would lean against its brick border and smoke pot between giggles soaked in soda and tea. We moved in ways unfamiliar, ways only our bodies had known. Your leg touched mine and there were no feelings, just safety. Just that moment, in the shadow of the fountain.
The theater attendants would watch us jealously and pretend they weren’t when we would hound them for tickets by blanketing them in woozy, strung-out half-sentences. They never minded. We were too cute to be minded.
We would settle into the rough theater seats. They were soft once, I’m sure, but not now. For us, never. The seats had always been bitter and frayed. Age had made them so. Something we rejected and ignored. The future never existed for you, and so it never would for me either. When I was with you, there was only ever now. And I’m burdened today with the knowledge that it was only ever then.
We’d never paid attention to the films, always too distracted by the space between us. Like staring into your own peripheral vision. How close were our elbows? I had always hoped they were only a little bit closer. I felt as though if they had touched, I would die on the spot. But, with you, death seemed as enthralling as Christmas morning. Our bodies could be found together, we could be studied, questions could be asked, rumors and theories could bloom from where our elbows met. But that moment never came, and I was shamefully thankful it hadn’t.
We would leave that theater, and we would pass that fountain again. I’d take my quarter and plop it into that murky water. And I’m sure you would wonder what I had wished, even if you would never ask. But I had never wished for anything. My quarters were filled only with secret admissions. Admissions that the fountain could bless unto the Moon with a kiss.
And now that you are gone, and the fountain has turned dry. I can feel those secrets falling back down from the moon. Filtering through the net of lights and falling back upon my wet cheeks, reminding me of someone I used to be. A fountain that wished she could kiss the Moon.