Tonight, I’m skipping nostalgia. I was already in pajamas, prepared for bed, but still I was waiting, hoping for a message like this. My phone glowed in the dark. Heartbeat quickened. Madison asked to meet. We haven’t seen each other since summer ended. Busy, which is what everyone always says, though I’d gladly make the time. I don’t push.
When we don’t see each other, we talk. Texts, mostly. Sometimes a phone call on our commutes. It was easy, those moments when we were together, bodies pressed close in the shadow of a tree or the back of a gallery’s blackbox. I’m surprised by how easy it is now, too. How open Madison feels when I can’t see her and the way I forget just how much she is still holding back. She’s told me about exes, others before me who have wanted things she wasn’t prepared to give. I can be what they weren’t, I tell myself. A role I’m prepared to play. In return, I give Madison little bits of me, things she can use to capture my tacit desires, like a net.
#
The bike ride from my apartment in the southeast quadrant of DC to the National Mall, where Madison wants to meet, is not long. Streets empty, desire pushing my pedals faster and faster. I imagine the bike alive, a body under me, pulsing. It has been a while since I have had a body under mine, being able to feel someone else’s power. I dock at the bikeshare station without fully dismounting, legs swung over to one side. One foot on a pedal, one gliding mid air. I feel like a kid again when I’m riding like this. So free. In the late night fog, my skin is damp.
The monuments at night: cloaked in thick mist, highlighted orange from old street lamp bulbs. I like to think I can go unseen, but nothing is unseen in DC. Surveillance everywhere. CCTV cameras, cops, undercover cops, secret service cops, even the national parks have their own pseudo-cops on horses with no blinders. As young students, my friends and I would get sloshed on Watergate rum and sneak down the steps to where the Potomac licked the marble embankment behind Lincoln’s large seat. Only the bravest or drunkest would plunge into the water. It wasn’t safe, back then. A lot cleaner now. Still hazardous, sure, but not as toxic. There’s always some kind of danger in this city, even if it goes unseen.
Madison’s text said to find her at the small island in the middle of a pond named after the Constitution. Everything important around the city is named after a famous piece of paper or a famous dead white man. I cross a minimal wooden bridge, no railing, from the edge of the pond to the islet, dedicated to 56 men who signed the declaration that birthed this country. At night, in the gauzy air, it feels as if I am stepping into a mirage. In tourist season it is quiet, ignored. The pond is drastically outscaled by the neighboring Reflecting Pool. Nothing much to see other than a couple of plaques tickled by a leaning willow tree. It sits in the shadows of the monuments for wars, for presidents, for those lost along the way, each their own celebration of violence. Cattails rise out of the fog like fingers grasping for the shore. I can hear the soft paddle of ducks further out in the pond. Overhead, a bird of prey eclipses the moon.
#
She’s beat me to the island, as I expected. Her neighborhood is a bit of a walk away, but her text said she was out at a bar with some coworkers and this was on her route home. I know DC and it isn’t on the way, but the message itself was riddled with alcohol-fueled typos. What did I care if this was out of her way or not? She wrote that she wanted to see me. I didn’t realize how much I’d been waiting for this. We’d sent a few slutty texts back and forth a week ago, but didn’t get anywhere. Imagination can only take me so far.
I clear my throat and in the shadows she shifts. Madison sits on a marble ledge, looking into the fog. It’s difficult to make out the contours of her body. Head, neck, and then a blur where her body’s border blends with atmosphere. Her hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail and in the dark, it looks like water. Moonlight glints off the piercings in her ear. Six. Her torso sways a bit, maybe a deep inhale, or perhaps the fog is making my vision hazy. I sit. Heat radiates off her in the cool night.
In just a few hours, the sun will rise over the dome of the Capitol, golden. I think Madison is going to speak first, but her mouth is on mine, dewy hands grab my face and hold me there. She tastes of tequila, lime and salt on the corners of her lips. Our mouths rough, smudging other’s edges. I feel drunk on her. We pull apart, exhales clouding, adding to the fog, our midnight cover.
“Thank you for coming,” she says, as if I am doing her some kind of favor. Suddenly I don’t know that I want to be someone’s favor.
“Sure,” I say. “It’s been a minute.” I don’t tell her I’ve missed her, though I have.
“I bet you were out with other hot girls,” she says and each vowel is drawn out long, slow, from the tequila.
“No.” I turn towards her, run my hand down the inside of her arm. Pause at her pulse. In the times we’ve been together before this, we haven’t talked exclusivity, no expectations on whatever might develop between us. “But it seems like you were?”
“Stoooooooop it.” Drawn out again. Her hand hides her face as if she is ashamed. Is any of this between us really honest?
“It’s fine,” I say. “I hope you had a good time.” What I want to say is I had been hoping she would message, but I know that will break the spell, lift the fog. What I want to say is I was waiting for her to say she wanted to see me again. What I want to say is I hope she was thinking of me the whole time she was out.
“Hey,” she says. “No one can see us here, right?” It seems to me that we can only exist together in these semi-public spaces. She moves my hand towards the button on her jeans. Hot breath. Tequila. My forehead against hers.
Emily Holland (they/she) is a genderqueer lesbian writer. Their debut collection, NOTIFICATIONS ON, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House for publication in January 2027. Their work appears in publications including Zócalo Public Square, HAD, Shenandoah, DIALOGIST, Little Patuxent Review, and Black Warrior Review. They teach creative writing at the George Washington University and are the Executive Editor of Poet Lore and the Communications Manager at The Writer’s Center. Photo by Tiffany Lueong.