shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare


David R. Forman


 

Driving Home

Driving home from the date that didn't work out, I saw a tiny white mark in the air. A straight line of snow came off a telephone wire, and, as it fell, broke into three segments. A silent fracturing of an insubstantial thing. Unremarkable, except that as I drove a few feet farther, another came down and then another. Line after line suspended, then breaking on the way down, keeping exact pace with the car. The early afternoon air had just gotten up to freezing in the sun, a light breeze had just picked up. Or maybe the first one, having fallen, released some infinitesimal tension in the next section of the telephone line, and then the next, in a nearly unnoticed chain reaction. White slice in the air, then fractured into tiny lines, then gone. Order comes and goes, inexplicable as hope.