Police Report

They found their bodies slumped towards each other, her head nearly in his lap. His upper body was thrown over hers as if protecting her from a falling bomb.

When the police finally lifted his body up and away from her and the steering wheel, they saw what had been unmistakably happening at the moment of the crash. His pants zipper was down completely. In fact, his jeans had been shimmied down several inches so that he was sitting on the waist of his pants and his belt.

His penis, just as dead as he was, lay inert but bursting through the slit of his white and blue checked boxers. It was pointing towards her as if to say, “It was her fault.”

Of course, they’d never know whose fault it was. In fact, after the police made the expected jokes among themselves, they managed to put all in its place so no one in the gossipy town would have the “did you hear” story to tell.

There still would be a sad story, for certain, but not the kind that humiliates or embarrasses those left living.

When they were identified as good friends and neighbors who'd told their spouses they were leaving the party early to "relieve the babysitter," it seemed even more fortunate that the police had taken the precautions they had.

out of order

It had been under his bed for weeks. He’d pull it out often, tying and retying the knot. He liked the feel of the thick, waxy rope in his hands and was proud of how adept he’d become at tying it. Today he held it in his hands with open palms, as if it had a life of its own. He looked down at it so long and steadily his eyes blurred. He waited until he heard his mother leave for work and his father for the coffee shop. Then he stood up. He felt calm as he walked up the stairs from the basement. He opened the door into the kitchen and the brightness of the day blinded him for an instant, but he didn’t hesitate. There was no sentimental last look around. There was nothing. He walked out the side door of the house and down the steep rock steps to the back yard. He didn’t bother to take the more well-worn path through the woods down to the elementary school playground. Instead, he charged right through the trees, their leafless branches scratching at his face and jacket. As he approached the jungle gym, he looked around for the first time, noting the emptiness of the muddy field and the swamp beyond. He heard a single bird. It was sitting on a branch at the edge of the woods. It watched him, making him feel self-conscious -- that any living thing should see him. But then he took comfort in the bird’s company, as he tied the rope around the higher of the two bars. He made the knot quickly and automatically and was angry when he saw he’d done it wrong. It was hanging too low. He looked over at the bird who was quiet now, and carefully retied the rope. The knot and length were exactly right this time so he didn’t hesitate. He climbed up on the bar and perched in a squatting position on top of it. Then he drew the rope up towards himself, pulling the circle up and ducking his head into it. Sliding it down to his neck, he yanked it tight.. He looked up one more time, but the bird was gone. Disappointed, he somersaulted forward towards the ground until the rope firmly stopped his fall.

For the love of Rob

Thoughts are fleeting. Or so it’s said. They run. They run through your head quickly and escape through your ears, if you’re not careful. You have to be fast to lock them in and keep them – in the form of words on a page, permanent – or in the form of speaking them to someone, probably not-so permanent. Unless it’s a person who thinks what you say is such gold that they go write it down or pass it on to someone else, “whisper around the world” style. Which, as the actual game demonstrates, causes things to get lost or enhanced in the retelling and usually with laughable and humiliating consequences; depending on whether you’re the listener or the speaker.

Rob feeds me. He tries very hard to set the pins up for me over and over. Just so I can knock them down. His patience and loyalty astound me. Astound is the wrong word. They don’t astound me at all. In fact, it’s exactly what I expect from him. He lives up to my expectations, which, by the way, are extremely high.

He’s in love with the written word. He is well read. He lives in the words, worships the putting together of those words in various combinations and recipes. He finds just the right words for me. Plucks them, no, carefully dislodges them, archeologist-like from books or journals or dusty corners of his brain. He then hand-wraps them and delivers them to me so that I might swallow them. And that they might get led through the simple factory of my brain and heart and come out the tips of my fingers via a pen and on to a page in some way that is worth reading. And perhaps by some miracle (because it really would have to mean that some swirling cosmic thing would have to happen and a multitude of stars align) those words would appear somewhere (in some published form) for some other husband to read and be struck by those words in such a way that he too excavates them carefully and with love and passes them on to some probably unknowing and unappreciative wife who would process the words and also write them down and the miracle of words and thoughts would be complete – one cycle of it. Because, of course, there are hundreds and thousands of years of this passing down, the renewal and recycling of thoughts and words, all born out of love and caring and deep consideration. All started with the passion of a Rob or Rob-like figure.

All in all, the writer is merely a conduit, a scribe, who carries out the work and love of Rob.