Melissa Allen

Wave and Particle

You know how it is: time is on your side. Then it isn't. You cartwheel down the sidewalk one day in spring and watch yourself drive by, ten years older in the passenger seat with your head on your boyfriend's shoulder, twenty years older in the driver's seat carpooling to your son's soccer game, thirty years older in the back seat of the lead car in your father's funeral procession, your mind emptier than it's been in years, turning your head to follow the progress of the little girl cartwheeling down the sidewalk. You never noticed her before.

the mistakes in my mirror image of myself

Well, but why should you have noticed her? Maybe she was never there before. And then again, why shouldn't you have? Is a little girl really a less permanent feature of the landscape than the house behind her, the one that looks eerily like your childhood home? Houses fall down, streets cave in. Even hills, like this hill your car is climbing to the cemetery, even hills wear down over time, don't they. Yes, someday someone will pick up this hill without thinking and put it in his pocket. And give it to his little girl when he gets home.

seismic movement my errors in judgment

The stars are coming out now, it's that late in the day, the dark comes early now that it's winter, though surely it was spring earlier today. You step out of the car and join the stream of your father's mourners, all of you shrinking and fading as you move toward his grave in the darkness. Stars, you think: now they're eternal — and then one winks out as you glance at it. Yes, it had a good run, but it's cold and dark now, and everyone living on the planets that spun around it winked out themselves long ago. Time flies like an arrow, only faster. You've wasted time, but no need to get so upset about it, everyone does. It's there to be wasted. And then it's not there anymore; or more precisely, it is, but you're not. You're not.

eight minutes later the truth finally dawns