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--- M A R T H A S I L A N O Until I spilled a plate of beans and rice with hot sauce into a customer's lap. Until I hastily misconstrued the distance of my side view mirror to the neighbor's fence, sheered it off like an ear of corn from the stalk. When the plane you're in suddenly loses lift, what else but to wish for the chance to leave from C7, not the disastrous C8. Never mind it was heading for Saginaw, better than the nowhere soon to be strewn with luggage blown to bits. But to go back to my kindergarten graduation-the pink-with-yellow-polka-dot dress, a grocery bag's bottom dangling a crepe paper tassel, to my father's "you did it!"- I'd live each day with the look on the face of the man who'd never return to Bandeleone's again, pay each week his dry cleaning bill, look, for the rest of my life, carefully over my shoulder, slowly, slowly backing up. |
© crossconnect, inc 1995-2002
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published in association with the
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university of pennsylvania's
kelly writers house
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