MY PERFECT YEAR

By

Todd Kelly

Winter would come first in my perfect year, as January is when most years that I remember started. We — that is you and I — would frolic about the powdery snowdrifts of the countryside and throw snowballs at each other from the dead branches of trees that were always a split second away from snapping under our weight.  We would make anatomically correct snowmen so detailed that the neighborhood children would already know the inner workings of human genitalia long before they got to middle school health class.  When we were done, we would run back to the house and drink scalding hot chocolate until our tongues were red and blistered.

In the Spring, we would run around the newly grown life and pollinate flowers like bees until the vegetation became so overgrown that small animals would get entangled and lost forever.  We would invent a new game for just the two of us involving elaborate rules that were constantly changing to make sure it never ended.  We would lie on our backs in the grass and from the sheer power of our wills we would shape the clouds into our likeness, so that we could lord over the world in white, puffy omnipotence.

In the Summertime, we would spend the day grilling meats and playing with the dog, a black Labrador retriever named Oswald, who only had three legs.  At night, we would catch fireflies and put them in a jar.  When we had enough we would rub them all over our bodies until we glowed in the dark and would stalk the neighborhood, scaring children. We would be unable to completely remove the yellow tinge from our skin and would go to the doctor’s office claiming we had jaundice.

In the Fall, the leaves would turn into colors so bright that they would burn your eyes if you looked directly at them.  We would collect baskets of fallen apples filled with worms and leave them on the porches of the elderly.  In the darkness we would gather all the furniture from the house in the backyard and start a huge bonfire.  We would burn all of our clothes and dance around the flames to keep our naked bodies warm against the cool night breeze.

As Fall turned to Winter again, we would become more solemn, recognizing that our perfect year was coming to a close.  The innate sense that this kind of existence would not be able to sustain itself for even one more than the 365 days that had been allotted to us would be overpowering.  Our energy would ebb, and by Christmastime we would not even be able to get out of bed to take solace in telling children that there is no Santa Claus. 

On New Year’s Eve, you would crawl into my bed and we would melt into each others’ arms, two bodies forever intertwined in one impossible feat that they had accomplished.