Copyright © 2002 LeeAnn Heringer
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Copyright © 2002 LeeAnn Heringer
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how we explained our leaving to the dogi. last Saturday morning in front of the Mt. View theater, a man was riding laps on a bicycle around the fountain that gets turned off late in summer to save water. he was bent low over the handlebars, sweaty and breathless, lockjawed as a sprinter. bolted to his back wheel was an empty child seat. his tires grumbled on the dry concrete pavers. his blurred reflection in the blue tiles of the empty fountain was dark against light. there was no wind. and the sky, the always empty blue of a California postcard. with one foot stepping beyond the plaza I realized I was already remembering this. while I turned away. while he still rode around the fountain. ii. I am already in the going part of gone, trying to slow my goodbyes like an exhausted child refusing to sleep until she has called goodnight to each of her twenty-five stuffed animals. and even though our picture will still be on the desk, my voice on the answering machine, I will go from being outside her to inside and she will have to carry me there for a while. this is, of course, too complicated for someone with a vocabulary of "good girl" and "bad girl", "cookie" and "sit". so I tell her -- dinner will still be poured out at six -- and close the car door. |
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