I turn, and there she is: Aisha, the slight dimple by her lip dancing, the streetlight flickering in her eyes. Suddenly, everything is laughing at me. The sidewalk, the trees in their cement cages, the leaves, the mailboxes along the doors. Everything is laughing. A thousand laughs that wrap around me, that start to suffocate all of them. And there’s Aisha, standing in the middle of it all, her laugh the conductor at the symphony of laughs, her laugh making a magnifying glass of my emptiness, her laugh that, when held to the light, bursts my body to flame.
