Last Summer

Robert A. Morris

Taking shortcuts that lead us nowhere, driving down tree-shadowed

curves, Heather’s leg against mine, freckled and cool. Drew, my best friend,

saw her first, but I really knew her, those green eyes reflecting on the gulf,

singing along with the Counting Crows, drowsy and discontented,

we wasted our summer while Drew mowed grass to buy a Harley. Wading

out in the shallow water, an undertow urging us deeper, our lips touching

then pulling away then moving together again, feeling guilt and relief, we

surrendered in late July, parking the Chevrolet by an evangelical church,

kissing surreptitiously, my hands tangling in her hair, and the hours unraveling

out into sleep. Afterwards, we talked feeling the resonance of the other’s voice,

beautiful nonsense, buying a house on Orange Beach that neither of us could

afford. Then we were silent. The gray wind prophesied rain. Tall grass bent and

revealed sun-bleached graves, lives forgotten. We returned home with no

words left. Drew ran his bike headlong into an eighteen-wheeler the day he bought it.

Wandering all autumn, trying to stand in a spot of sunlight, I heard him every

time headlights screamed past. I called Heather, but silence hung heavy in the air,

her phone unanswered. Only speaking in passing, I saw her in flashes of every

waitress with green eyes. She was the ghost who hovered in my memories--

collecting seashells, making eye contact in the rearview, parked in the cool wind before

the high weeds parted. She married a soldier six months later and left for San Diego,

driving out on I-10, passing the cut fields, the crumbling churches, the winter

white stones counting days cherished then buried, languid and lazy then stone.