Eight weeks. Eight weeks since you last heard his voice, fielded his texts. This is caramel time, gooey, stringy, malleable. Pandemic, fires, social unrest. The day the skies scream orange you take your son to the city because the air quality is good today and will not be tomorrow. You can just count on it.
Why did he choose this
time of devastation to duck out? He must already have known you feel bereft.
Did he pile atop that ashy misery just because he could?
Because he can’t
have what he wants?
*
You pick your way
down the steps, descending from the second level of the bar to the first. You
haven’t looked at your phone. There is no need.
This happens every
time.
You walk past the
wood bar and the stained glass, past the people enjoying their Saturday night. You
pause a moment by the door, light from outside falling upon your face. So cliché
a moment, but clichés happen in life too.
So
easy to blow off the call, walk back upstairs, hold out a hand. Shrug the years from the shoulders, spin time sufficiently
backward. A name dropped from the tongue, the memory. A history ground
underfoot, then washed into the sewer.
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