I’ll Never Forget

“Meadow after Dion Salvador Lloyd” by Judith Skillman

The blood pooling in our heads as we hung upside down off your basement couch, airing out our sweaty feet and fears: heights, June bugs, raised voices, broken beer bottles. Squeezing them like splinters and laughing at the smallness in our palms. Writing our names on the wall with snot because we were boys. Adding, was here, in case someone forgot. The bruised peach you nicked from the neighbor’s yard because your fridge was empty. Finishing each other's bites. The way you licked your lips with a grin and said, it’s like we’re digging a moat with our mouths. Your obsession with building forts and guarding them from dragons. That one time a boy hurled a flaming red ball at me and you blocked it with your chest. When the door upstairs slammed and rattled our bones to dust. How you swept up our shoes, a backpack from under the couch, and took my hand. The softness of your hand. The way it led me through wire fences and buckthorn thickets without a scratch. Running across the overgrown railway tracks, wondering why it stopped running and if we ever would. Gazing up at the radio tower when we finally did; a spear piercing a golden meadow, birds perched on the tip like a dare. How you puffed your chest, handed me a walkie-talkie, and told me you’d radio as soon as the coast was clear. The headlamp you strapped on because we were losing light, fast. The clouds storming in faster. My heart racing as you climbed higher and higher and higher. Your backpack slipping and falling back to earth. You, falling. My eyes, closing. Us, hanging upside down off a crescent moon—no blood, no fear, no rain, just our glimmering toes reaching for each other.

about the Author

Kyle Weik (he/him/his) is a queer Japanese-American writer based in Los Angeles, and the first-place winner of the 2025 Blue Frog Flash Fiction Contest. His work has appeared in lovely places including Ghost Parachute, Flash Frog, Vestal Review, Emerge Literary journal, and has been selected or nominated for several anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. You can find him on social media at @kyleisamu.

about the artist

Judith Skillman paints expressionist works in oil on canvas, board, and paper. She is interested in feelings engendered by the natural world. Her paintings have been featured on the covers of Thin Air Magazine, Torrid Literature, The Awakenings Review, and appear in The Penn Review, Southern Quill, and elsewhere. Her work was featured at 2026 Artist Trust Benefit Auction. Visit https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/823323, https://www.instagram.com/judithskillman54/