Fall winds carried word of the news. They’d been drinking, and wrapped the car around a tree. An entire life, though brief, only in her late teens– eulogized, neatly summarized, with two dimensional indifference on inky-finger newsprint.
Whether read, or cast aside to read the sales flyers, or the sports section, makes no difference now. She’s gone. The single page of newspaper, found blowing in the wind, says her name was Dana. Her last name, smudged, can’t be read, but I know, or I knew, in any case.
She shuffled her feet when she walked, scuffling, feeling the pavement, learning the curves of the world’s slow turning, always lovely in faded jeans and red-plaid flannel, rolled sleeves and high-top sneakers. Careless, sandy-brown hair hid her sleepy, hazel eyes, but they would gleam, when she laughed, and when she smiled.
And I wondered, if we’d made it, maybe tried one more time– if it’d have been different for her, or the ending the same.
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