The Uninvited

by Cat Winters

“For some people it is. But for others”—I swallowed and turned away from her white-streaked hair and red-rimmed eyes—“life’s far too long to not be selective.”

Truth is a torch, as the poet Goethe had warned, but I didn’t care if Daniel’s stories scorched and blinded me.

“I’ve been driving my family’s trucks and tractors since I was fifteen years old, and not once did my womb or my breasts get in the way of steering and braking.”

Yet this added surge of hatred only proves that America has no right sailing to foreign lands in the name of protecting freedom—not when we’re steeped in the mire of violent inequality here at home.

If anyone were to ever say to me that music wasted one’s time, I would urge them to climb the stairs to that Buchanan Masonic Lodge ballroom and experience their own toes tapping to the rhythm of hot jazz, their own blood throbbing with vitality.

“How do you say ‘I love you’ in German?” I asked in a whisper, while the band filled the store with the type of rag meant for dancing, not departures. Daniel cleared his throat and whispered back, “Ich liebe dich.” I kissed his left cheek and said into his ear in my softest voice, “Ich liebe dich, Wilhelm.” And without another word, I slipped out the door.

could describe that first real kiss in terms of piano crescendos or a blaze of fireworks or the brisk rushing of my blood through my veins, but I’m going to leave that particular moment as a gift for just him and me.