A Day Off (with You) 

by Josie Bednar 

It’s the break, we’re off school and there’s little but ginger ale and sandwiches, days out and nights in, and I’m surprised you’ve let me stay around you this long. We take a backpack to the museum and watch the fountain bubble, spend ten minutes just climbing the steps to the entrance and pretending to turn back. They don’t have the big names here, but there are some photos. 

You are, like Frank O’Hara said, worth more than all those paintings, except for maybe the ones of Judith and the severed head. You look alike today in that t-shirt, Allori’s Judith, golden and busy. And it’s true I couldn’t say I saw you, for in one hand you held my head, still bloody, but we walked the steps together.  

 At home, we sat and exchanged photos. You smiled, and you knew me, and either the AC was on, or it was raining hard, or maybe both, but the noise hung in the air like droplets, which after a while started splashing to the floor. That, or we went outside, hair swishing past collars, in which case something must have happened to make you this beautiful. Or I just hadn’t noticed so well before.