You take two of my fingers and I follow you, that’s important, so when we swerve onto the lawn I see the same golden lion crouched behind the hedge, hot panting, moist nostrils, muscles rippling; snapshot perfect June day, wet rich scent of mown grass, wind rising from the west, or is that the east side where we see the old tree fort, it seems to lean in the wind, rickety rotten boards the color of the oak limbs they’re nailed between (“Not safe,” though someday we’ll explore that too), but for now we sneak up to the hedge because again you’re whispering, “There’s a lion behind there,” and who am I to argue once you take my hand; so we poke our heads around the hedge and then it’s “Quick Gampy hurry hurry!!” and we hurtle back across the lawn with the roaring, snorting lion hot on our heels, and when you fall I don’t pick you up like a child but help you to your feet like a grownup, so we can run, run, outrun the imaginary lion across the true grass into the true wind beneath the true sun and true blue crystal sky, dash all afternoon out of breath again and again until, absolutely, since I’m following and you’re leading, the lion though it will never hurt us or at least not here not today is true, true too
Timothy Boudreau’s work appears or is forthcoming at Fiction Southeast, Lost Balloon, Milk Candy Review and elsewhere. His collection Saturday Night and other Short Stories is available through Hobblebush Books. Find him on Twitter at @tcboudreau or at timothyboudreau.com.