The veteran sits in the glass
waiting room,
his
car undergoing surgery with solenoid sutures,
tires
aligned and torqued and measured,
blood
drained and replaced to lubricate
the
valves of a piston heart and carburetor lungs.
“Gonna
tighten up this gal,” the service guy says.
The
old man watches the interstate twenty yards away,
cars
sliding through arteries and headed for Texas,
but
the sinus rhythm, like his own, is gone.
Traffic
is erratic, not something to hang your hat on.
He
scrolls through his phone, deletes contacts
that
were dead and dying fifteen years ago.
Staring
at the sky, eyes glazed,
he
slips a little lower in the leather chair,
draws
his shoulders closer to his ribs,
and
the plaid shirt is suddenly two sizes too big.
His
bones are compacting, shock absorbers
taking
blows from sixty years ago.
He
remembers the German he killed
with
a bayonet on a beach in France,
and
his memories are crowding in,
falling
into a black hole because the cars
are
moving too fast now, too fast,
and
he doesn’t want to keep track anymore.
His
vehicle is lowered on the rack, is compacted
by
gravity and grease and hydraulic entropy.
The
day is moving on, getting shorter,
and
when the service guy comes looking
for
the VFW hat here, there, and everywhere,
he
finds a pile of clothes on the leather chair.
~William Hammett
Site Map
No comments:
Post a Comment