Cl^risti
was a quick death—one
It
telephone pole,
all
slippery road, one car, one
somehow adding up
carnivorous emptiness that seems what I remember is not so much.
to
be
life
to
zero— the small
without
her.
And
yet,
A parking lot, late at night, waiting for her.
I'm curled up in the passenger's seat. She screeches to a stop, he rolls down his window, asks her "Did you just use your emergency brake to stop like that?"
She smiles, cool!" and
life
rolls
flows on.
her eyes.
He
says,
"Wow,
that
was
pretty
Strange, these pebbles of memories the
swirling eddies polish and leave at my feet.
remember another
I
granite
.
.
time, after everything.
Pine trees,
.we're sitting in the memory-strewn grass, and he says,
"We're probably sitting on her feet." So we laugh, and we move a little ftirther away. It isn't an easy time, but not as difficult as I would have expected (as if something like this could ever be expected). And now it's much later. We don't talk much anymore. We have new lives, new friends, new interests. And I wonder sometimes if he still goes there at night to think, and if it all still adds up to zero for him.
Jennifer Peiter
