Miles Meth: THEYHOOD • Cleaver Magazine

Flash Nonfiction by Miles Meth
THEYHOOD

Walking alone under a rotting-mango sunset I saw the stranger’s reflection on the face of one of those shiny plastic gravestones people decorate their yard with on Halloween. He wore a dignified grimace and a black A-line dress. The way the fabric hung over his thin hips and flat chest was all wrong, but something about his shoulders, dimpled with muscle, bulging out of the ruffled sleeves, projected an impossible self-possession.

I tried and failed not to stare, my gaze frighteningly anchored to him. It was something deeper than attraction, one of those moments where my soul stirred and rose up through my pores, tickling my skin.

It was the same sensation I had as a kid at the end of summer camp, absorbing my parents’ faces when they stepped out of their car on pick-up day. There was an immense recognition in their eyes, like sorrow and joy combined. A recognition that I had changed in small, indelible ways, irreconcilable with the boy they knew before.

In the fraction of a second that it took for the man’s scowl to soften, I realized I was encountering a possibility of myself. We nodded to one another, and he passed out of sight. The click of his stilettos on the sidewalk matched the pounding euphoria in my chest, stealing my breath, as if I had just seen my reflection for the very first time.

Miles Meth (they/them) is a queer, Jewish union organizer and writer living in Boston MA. They are a recent MFA graduate from the University of Southern Maine and have previously published or are forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Boston Globe, and more. They were a finalist for the Tennessee Williams/Saints and Sinners LGBTQ Literary Award and are a nominee for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

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