Sleepless Summer by Carlos Contreras
Editorial intern Hannah Wilder on today’s bonus flash: This beautiful short by Carlos Contreras is soft and understated but also leaves my heart heavy. The ambiguity of character makes it easy to slip myself into the shoes of Alex or Alex. Who are Alex and Alex anyway if not all of us?
Sleepless Summer
Both Alex and Alex were too young to share the amount of love that they did. They also weren’t aware that they shared a name when they first met and the other’s gaze set their heart racing, but there was no shortage of jokes to be made. However, their youth was fleeting, and they shared one last summer before they would each depart to opposite ends of the country. Their days were busy with minimum wage and paperwork, so they snuck out at midnight to spend those fading hours together. And under this sunless sky, the two rocked cars and melted bodies while learning everything but their last names. With every sunrise, they felt the fragility of their relationship and how they didn’t like it when they could see the other’s face. They always preferred closing their eyes and moaning their own names in the dark because for that moment, nothing else mattered but the flesh between them. Until sunlight glistened in their eyes and they remembered that this life was fleeting, and this love was only temporary.
Carlos Contreras is a Guatemalan college student currently studying at the University of North Texas. Their work has been published in the Mockingbird Poetry Society's 2018 Anthology and is forthcoming in Forces, the annual fine arts journal of Collin College.
