Non-Diplomatic Affairs of Youth – Alex Behm

December 20, 2025

She was taller than I, five years older. She smelled like wool and unwashed hair and her hands were largish when they held mine. It was dark when she sent me a message. She needed to be together with someone, she said. Sick with sad, could I please bring her soup?
        We had, together, more than soup. In the morning I drove home in the sweater I’d worn the night before and closed my eyes down stretches of paved road. Our days went on the same. I showered and cut fruit and went to work. She stared at the ceiling and washed her sheets and heard a radio, I figure.
        Then I got sick myself so I called her. I called and I called and got sicker and sicker. I missed work. I missed her, I needed her, I’d convinced myself, and I hurt all over. I heard nothing for ten days. Then she rang my doorbell with her hair unwashed and longer. I asked her, What has happened?
        I just missed you somehow, she said, but I guess it doesn’t matter. She shrugged and walked through the door, left her shoes on the floor, tugged my small wrist towards the room where I sleep.
        Sitting on the duvet I had nothing to say and so I held my breath.
        Don’t cry, she said. Listen, listen. If you can’t do this, then we can’t be together.
        I blinked heavy, shut my eyes, and I felt very young. All the air blew out from my lungs and I wondered, Are we not together now?