from my unpublished second collection
High winds, and the streetlights on all day, the foothills blazing with taillights, with fires we can not see. People still went shopping, got their oil changed, ate out. Russia broke up like an iceberg adrift "somewhere in the North Atlantic." Dear John, said Grozny, and scenes of the city appeared on billboards where skeletal models tugged at their jeans as if they couldn't wait to love you. On the news, the stadium under black smoke, then Bob the anchorman bantering with the sports guy about the coming game, "Out of the frying pan into the fire, huh?" I remember him apologizing "to the City" the next evening, before he lost his job. Bob, who'd never before blinked at the camera lights.
Ah, Bob, if only you knew what, thirty-five years later, that would mean to the boy who wanted to be you. If only we knew what it would mean to us all, what he'd say he learned that evening, watching you secretly from a friend's house, the same blue eyes we'd know from the Podiums, unblinking, his small hands perfectly still.
First published in The Gettysburg Review
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