He leaves an envelope by the soda fountain, a red heart sticker on the flap. She pulls the paper apart and throws the pieces in the trash without reading the message inscribed inside. She flees, skips class and drives her pickup truck to the waterpark with a joint between her lips. She slips like blood through a vein down the waterslide. Pieces of trauma are in the trash of forgotten things that she can’t remember through the haze of pot and chlorine. Being high is like finding a rare gem among all the rubble. It’s like watching everything through a field of color prisms. Rotten feelings float away. Memories sink like ships. The blue water is gold melting into the sun. She splashes, and later, she crashes her truck going 90 mph right into a tree on a road lined with roadkill and tin cans. Archaic, pagan symbols are cut with blades into the tree trunk. A white cross stands out in a wheat field where it happened. She is a spirit orb that is always changing colors. There are many of her haunting the highway. Angels made of clouds with no more self-doubt, wearing the countryside as a cardigan. Crowning their heads with weathervanes and whispering scripture in the white noise that clouds the earth like ether. The noise that calls to mortals from beyond the coil. A dimension of greater things. Death can’t erase their voices.
Janine Crellin