[Y]ou’ll think this is what she means because you can feel your cheeks blooming & your heart stutter-stepping from the attention of this woman, so when you ask her only half embarrassed if this is how she’ll make you come with her mind (because it’s working, it’s working) she shakes her head, touches your hand–may I?–& it’s then that you feel her voice in your brain–“so much of pleasure is mental”–& she smiles over the rim of her glass & it feels like when you were a kid on your back in a field, the boom-crash of fireworks echoing in your chest & it feels like it’s 10:30 on a Saturday night & you’re driving the back roads of your home town, all corn fields & moonlight & your favorite song’s on the radio & you’re cresting one hill then another & another & she’s smiling at you from the passenger seat & both of you are gone.
Meghan Phillips, from “When You First Meet the Telepath,” Best Microfiction 2020, eds. Meg Pokrass, Gary Fincke, & Michael Martone (Pelekinesis, 2020)