1. Joe and Velma
By Shanon Quinn
A woman who used to sleep in this room hung herself…just down my front path
in the garage. I think of her sometimes as I pull weeds from her flowerbeds, cook for my
family in her kitchen and hang my clothes in her closets.
Her story flashes before me as the stiff door I have to force open swings closed by
itself. She’s shutting me in again. She doesn’t scare me. She is old, stale death. She is a
legend.
She was beautiful fifty years ago. She was loved. She was mourned. Now she is a
dusty, musty old presence. Now she is sorrow less.
She is not like our friend who was killed last month…one month ago today. He
was vibrant, he was alive. He was only twenty-two. He was four months younger than
me. He was seven feet tall and would hit his head on the ceiling fan in my living room.
He relaxed on my couch every day since I moved here.
I suffer flashbacks of his laugh.
I see retakes of his smile and of the way he held my daughter.
She still asks for him.
Someday Joe will be like Velma; another dusty presence in this old house…but
not as long as I live.