Its engine cut, the light aircraft must have sauntered over the field into the line of pines where a wing broke against a trunk and Pierre was flung face down upon a mound of earth. I’d like to have seen it, but I missed the plane dozing, wings resting on the air like elbows flopped, its occupant tossed out before he could leap—it was my reading of the situation.

Poppa and old man Allman were sitting in front of the hardware store when I rode up on my bike. Each man held a stick of wood in one hand and a pocket knife in the other. Whittling was the preferred occupation of the old men in town.  “There now,” poppa said, sliding the blade smoothly down the stick he peeled away a thin curl of wood. The sliver floated down to join the growing pile at his feet. ”That’s a sharp knife.”

When the crowd around us cheers for a diving catch in left field, Mark asks me where I am, his voice cracking.

“I’m at the Red Sox game with some people from work.” Which isn’t a complete lie. Ron is my editor at the newspaper. That much is true. However, what I leave out, what Mark suspected months ago is Ron wants to sleep with me. 

I eat through the inside of a mall. I spot the same tie and jacket waiting for me every morning with legs shaking and a resigned forehead that shuttles from one metaphor to another in less time than it takes to inhale the coffee and muffin that are part of the deal