Cold War Kids

The ice was all we thought about then, all we missed. 

            Lying, thieving and cheating, all that was too easy, Man. They’d become ritual—cheap tricks we’d tired of. But the ice was slipping away like promises, or some kind of gold we’d heard about and wanted to admire and fondle, if only from afar.

            We’d taken down the Playboy centerfolds by then and where the nudes used to flop—their melon breasts gleaming like a totally different kind of pledge, or fruit—we now hung pictures of polar bears taped up in the tree fort like mug shots.

 We had glaciers, ice caps, icebergs, The Titanic, snow drifts deep as wells, old dudes in parkas with frost on their lips, icicle hair, their white foggy breath censored on the magazine paper, yet visible if you looked close enough. The ice was all we missed.

 Back then, Man, we ended every sentence with “Man” because we weren’t men by any stretch, taffy chew or dad’s belt. What we were was a nest of cluckolded and confused boys who never knew we were, like love, when you’re a couple of feet steeped in it.

            Nearly every afternoon, we passed Gordie’s jar of clear around the fort while Eddy fished the plastic sack for cubes that landed in our cracked glasses like wind chimes or church bells with a hollow ring to them, signaling prayer or thoughtful observance. 

            If you listened even a bit, you could hear every swallow we took as we sat up there on the unforgiving planks, swaying with the reckless wind, kind of cozy yet awkward and unsure, trying to remember what it felt like to shiver, to feel something you can only get once and can’t ever get back again.