An archetypist

This mop-haired sophomore once asked me, between slurps on his retainer, why I named Xenith as I did, “all exez instead of zeez.” And I didn’t want to tell him, this wide-eyed naif, until I remembered I had been younger at my own age of reckoning. So I turned my head low and away and said:

“I once seduced Xochipilli. I laced my lips with teonanácatl and kissed him until we came to temicxoch. The X is just divine inheritance.”

He paused then nodded, and rode his bike into the setting sun. As I watched him dissolve into fire, I began to wonder why I think only of dead stories.