A Demon Dates in New York City
Dimitri died in 1792, and still I grieved. Sometimes this grief was a scrim of murk, algae obscuring a pond flat with reflection. Other times, grief was pellucid light through clean water at a farm upstate, an intentional offering to the bright flare of his memory.
The world, when we met, was hard for men like us. Dimitri had to secret me up to his cluttered attic room above the print shop, and he was always tired, always covered in smoke and sweat. It was hot in the attic. It was better without clothes. I loved kissing his closed eyes before I kissed his mouth—a sort of prayer, taboo for my kind—amidst masculine shouts and the press grinding below. I would meander over his body like a stream, mouth drifting along skin. Dimitri died young. At the end, I sat by his bedside and pressed one damp rag after another to his fevered head. Air rattled through his weak lungs, and over the following years, I winced whenever I heard winter-bare branches tapping glass.
Different scents and sounds permeated in 2023, but I still found myself wanting to be a river for the men I found myself with—flow through me, let me give you back to yourself. Last night, I went on a date with a witch from Manhattan. While he spoke about a trip to Taiwan, his folded napkin grew legs and tried to walk off the table. I caught it before it could escape. We laughed. We shared dessert.
Inside his apartment, hyacinths pulsed in time with our heartbeats. Leaves in the shapes of birds fluttered shadows across the ceiling. It was an aerie, an aquarium of air. Tail around his wrist, his lips at my horns, and when he kissed one of their sharp points, I marveled at the gentleness existent in this world.
In the morning, I made us coffee and said goodbye. I longed to run my hands through his curls, to feel the continual delight of his unhorned scalp, but even after hundreds of years, newness frightened me, made me hesitant to push too hard.
Instead, I left to water my own plants. I couldn’t compete with a witch in an open concept loft, but I liked to try to keep things alive. Water rained over green leaves, honeysuckle, and then into black soil.
As lunar moths curved in my stomach, reminding me of first times with other men I’d kissed and ached for through wars and decades and lives, Dimitri was still the wall behind the climbing ivy, my foundation. Even when he could no longer speak, he refused to drop my hand. I let the can levitate, pulled out my phone, and typed: Thank you for last night.
As I moved into the kitchen to warm a corn muffin in the oven, I felt pearl and gleaming, a cup of gilded milk.
Gray bubbles on my screen meant clear water—cold bathing with phlox crowning the banks. It meant he was texting me back.
© 2024 Jared Povanda
About the Author
Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from the Finger Lakes region of New York, as well as the co-founder and co-EIC of the literary journal Bulb Culture Collective. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, multiple times for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and his fiction has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. His story “Missing Pieces” was highlighted as a Must-Read Speculative Short Fiction pick at Reactor Magazine (formerly Tor) in 2022. You can find more of his work in numerous literary journals including Wigleaf, Phoebe Journal, and Passages North.