All that’s left behind

Asymmetry Magazine, December 2017

Slipstream

I knew the black hole by the stream was you. So melodramatic and obvious! Plus, who else would have known to be there?

I found you exactly three weeks after you died. I’d had an argument with mom and ran out of the house in tears, trailing the sorts of words you’d always scolded me for. “Sara! language,” You would have said.

The winter wind tugged at my hair as I skirted around the edge of the football field, following the path that wound between the bare helicopter trees. I cursed as I slipped in the mud, coming to the arching hook of the stream where the water pooled with little fish and you had once showed me how to skim stones. I lit a cigarette and that’s when I saw you.

For sure, you’re the smallest black hole ever. Then again, I guess I’ve never seen another. Of course, I hadn’t because if I had I would have been sucked in and compacted and stretched out into nothing!

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