sometimes Rachel

nude, descending

White haze. I walk blind, following the dog grinch. Not mine keeping him for a girl. Name is grinch. The street is across from the dead. Tombstones faint through the pale a tiny cemetery I’m walking among the hushed. Through an open window a family sits down to supper. Behind them a television flickers silent bleeding colors. The dog stops to piss. Not my dog. Keeping him for a girl. Traffic lights change red to green with no cars to stop or go. My boots scrape. The dog's collar jingles. Concentrate on the low subconscious hum from the streetlamp. Scan the haze a rambling figure approaches. A shapeshifter moving through morphine white. Familiar in the short warped stride. Coming closer it's a white male middle twenties. Squat and muscular. Loose torn cargo shorts. One leg longer than the other. Disintegrating gray tee with ripped pocket and shapeless brown hat.

Owen. I’d heard he lived around here.

I sift what news I’ve had. His girlfriend supposedly had a kid. I can’t remember her name. I made out with her once, drunk in a parking lot. Two or three years ago. The fuck is her name. Her phone number was written on my hand but disappeared with dead skin and I never called her. I should have because a few months later she was living with Owen. She stopped bleeding and they were married by a judge.

Last thing I heard they had an accident. Owen freaked out driving high in the rain and went over a guard rail. The car rolled five times. He was barely hurt but she went through the window face first. The kid was born retarded or something. And since then I don’t know. Owen was never exactly a friend, just someone I knew in the third grade. He will fade past. Eyes flick over me and away. Hesitate. Owen stops and the dog goes tense.

Thought it was you Jack.

Owen. Heard you were around.

My place is down the street. Come up and say hello to Sally.

Her name is Sally.

Don’t be weird, Jack.