Maple Leaves

Her hair fell like maple leaves in autumn when she released the clip. It brushed across the arm of the young man sitting next to her. He forgot the brass band and the place he had gone to behind closed eyes, and turned to her.

She didn't know why it worked. A rehearsed glance or a soft hip jutted while standing at the bar and the room owed her attention. She parted her lips. The nervous stammer sat on her tongue.

The piano lulled the saxophonist. The boy in rolled up sleeves led the girl with tattoos onto the dance floor. He slid his hand under her waist length hair and pressed his thumb into the small of her back.

The music and the weight of his arm resting on her hip summoned the memory of a Louisiana bar, and dancing tippy toe on a wood plank porch in the arms of a man whose name she left on a napkin at the bar.