We sit atop the big wheel and embrace. The cabin dangles like a glossy chrysalis. Our lenses clack. The girders tremble, the kiss takes, we’re aloft. I hum, I want to be your girl, your gal, your lass, voice creaking into life.

Thrust forward into empty air, we circle out toward the horizon.

As a young woman, I envied the girls who fell in love. They married, had babies, lived blameless lives. Now, I pause on my daily walks and peer into their kitchens at dinnertime. A woman serves, a child eats, a man gazes out the window. I press my nose to the glass, an urchin or evil fairy godmother. 

Don’t look down, you say, but the words unleash a counter-spell. 

As a child, I spun the knobs of an Etch-a-Sketch until the silver powder coating the underside of the screen fell away. Dimly revealed in the depths of the toy lay a secret: a solitary stylus beneath the glass, pursed in a kiss.

The wheel ascends. I could tip my face skyward and drink in the good air. I could array myself in blossoms and burn with love. But instead, I don my readers and make out the signs. I see how your puns will charm, then grate. How the dial around my nipple, hair after silver hair, will tell us kissing time is over. 

Mesmerized by the turning axle, I follow the spokes downward and slide into the wheel’s mighty and intimate white guts. The machinery, it’s massive.