O, How I Had It All Wrong Randall Brown Randall Brown teaches at Rosemont College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. He is the author of the award-winning collection Mad to Live, now available as a reprinted deluxe edition from PS Books, his essay appears in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field, and he appears in the Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction. He has been published widely, both online and in print, and blogs regularly at FlashFiction.Net. He is also the founder and managing editor of MATTER PRESS and its Journal of Compressed Creative Arts.
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She rolled down the window, no matter the season, over the wind callin’ out anywhere, arising to ride beside me like that promise I made to myself never to be like them, trapped and dreamless. She waited in the car as the conveyor belts sent parts to my spur to count and package and throw in boxes. Parents transformed to bosses as I went into that factory in light, came out in the dark, the car empty. The skies waited, opened up—and Mary in the flood, drowned, a faraway voice yellin’ out let it rain, let it rain. I heard she married a fireman, gave birth to a son the world had no place for. She never was like all those other girls. You’ve got to go home to find her again—to take her to that anywhere that hung forever on her lips. But home is all parts and boxes, fire and water, pharaohs and I used to dream of all the places I could take her. Maybe she’s still that scared and lonely girl waving from the porch, but now it’s good-bye. The garden’s gates are shut tight, like eyes and chests. O Mary, how I dreamed of saving you.
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