She was a criminal at eighteen, maybe nineteen
and probably knew EMTs in every state
from North Carolina to South Dakota.

It’s entirely possible that she’s of
a much more interesting world
than the one in which we work
and pray and wait for Christmas
to line the streets with pure, white snow.

He’s willing to believe she was dead
before he was ever born. He wonders about this
and starts to distrust the scar in his shoulder
that she made with her fingernails.

Potential is often greater than capacity,
and that certainly applies to the human mind.
His imagination could have willed the memory
and the injury over the last time he slept well.

It’s possible. It’s unfortunately reasonable.

It’s a broken leg that just recently healed,
some bruises, a knife wound, bad scratches and a couple of cracked ribs
that have a long way to go.

It’s the middle of a sentence about
the spontaneous marriage in Reno
(six hours until we hit the city, baby),
which was roughly the same moment
when she got the knife into his kneecap.

Eighteen or nineteen,
a little weird with her summer clothes
so close to winter and all that big talk
of love at first and then second sight.

They met at the parking garage
on Baker Ave, Friday. Saturday,
they were headed to Reno.

Saturday night,
twenty goddamn minutes after the accident,
and the EMTS are pulling him out of
one of the more average wrecks on 460.

Dolores was the one who called it in. Long gone
by the time they got there. He can’t remember what she did
to get away, but he images she probably flagged down
the first son-of-a-bitch who stopped.

The first son-of-a-bitch to drive by, period.

He remembers the way she looked at him
upside-down because the car had done
five complete flips while traveling through the air.

She was a woman who had been
through this a few hundred times. Anyone could see that,
and he saw it before he passed out.

Hard to believe it was six months ago.

She’s probably still beautiful,
maybe even a few months younger.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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