Disarticulated Life: Past, Present, Future
by William R. Soldan
Past, Present, Future
You move in with a friend of hers, a peeling foursquare on a blind street overlooking the interstate. A man from her past. Before you. He has several large dogs and carries a gun under his left arm.
The city looks bombed out, cracked bricks and falling down buildings, mills ten years gone but still standing in the gash of low ground that cuts through the heart of it all.
You have to walk to the end of the block to catch the school bus. Sometimes your mom walks with you and bums cigarettes from the older kids hanging out behind the corner store with the grated windows and neon sign. She didn’t smoke. But now she does.
It will be many years before you find out that she tried to join the military shortly before you left to come here. They wouldn’t take her. Years before you wonder what exactly that would have meant, for you.
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