We're Both on Roller Skates

We’re both on roller skates and I don’t remember when or where we got these roller skates, but here we are by the factories skating our buns off and damn we’re good despite not having done this since ‘92. I crouch onto the curb to watch you skate, feeling its bumps and cracks pressing into my thighs. I shout about how surreal it is to see you in roller skates and a tutu while taking sips from a hip flask. It’s absurd like that dog in a bow tie we saw crossing Myrtle Avenue a few hours before we got these roller skates from fuck knows where. You tell me to follow you as you try squeezing through a fence into a construction site where you’re certain Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I shout to you that Jimmy Hoffa is not buried here, but in New Jersey. Then I have to spend the next ten minutes convincing you we shouldn’t go to Jersey at two in the morning to find Jimmy Hoffa and you stick your tongue out and lift your tutu, flashing the underwear with the yellow flowers before agreeing it’s a bad idea. You follow this with a feat you’ve called weeing while wheeling that makes me clap until my hands ache. After, we skate back to our place, the way lit by streetlights. Orange cones form a line in front of our building. You proceed to kick them over one by one, almost stumbling the whole time. On the last one you pull back too far, your faulty equilibrium quitting on you and your knees smacking the pavement. Blood comes in streams the color of cherry Kool-Aid as you mutter about cones always telling people where they can and cannot go.









L. Soviero was born in Queens and currently lives in Melbourne. She is doing a Masters in Creative Writing online with The University of Edinburgh. Her most recent work can be found at Ex Fic.