Why Nagasaki?

I put quarters in the candy machine searching the nougat landscape for an Original Scorched Earth bar. The chocolate love melts on sunny days and in the napalm of your touch my fingers get sweetly sticky. I taste each one before I wipe them off on my pants.

Hiroshima was enough, I always wonder why Nagasaki? The silhouettes haunt you, or they soon will.

She was an enigma to me, initially so alluring, so beautiful in the photographs she sent. Small, with delicate shoulders that curved gracefully to her small breasts, dancer's breasts, I only saw those few photographs of her, one of her sitting at a table, another one of just her head.

We had fallen in love; I guess you can call it love for two people who had never met in person, who had only talked in stilted text messages and a few passionate phone calls. I had sent a lot of pictures of me, increasing in intimacy as we talked more and more intimately. She promised to send me pictures of her, but her camera never seemed to work.

Twice she had planned to travel so we could meet, but both trips fell through, so it was not until she moved into my town for good, that we were able to meet. Unable to meet her at the airport, I visited her at her hotel, but instead of going up to her room, we had dinner and spent the evening talking in the hotel lobby.

I didn't think much of it though, figuring that it was good to take it slow, that even though we had shared our most intimate thoughts and fantasies together, we still needed to grow more comfortable being physically together. I returned home, to my wife and kids that evening, still completely committed to the woman who had traveled to me, but somewhat unsettled.

Since she was a dancer, I did expect her body to be much firmer than most women I knew, but she still seemed strange. She moved with a strangely awkward grace, almost as if she were dancing, but to the wrong song.

After meeting her at her hotel for several days, she finally invited me up to her room, which she had well stocked in booze. I had quite a bit to drink already, but accepted each drink she offered me in her room. By the time we settled down together on the couch, I was very drunk.