Crash

The Car on the Hill, in the Night

He sees the face of the woman in the passenger seat. She follows his approach intently in the wing mirror, her eyes fighting the pinpoints of glare from the truck’s lights behind them. She refuses to blink, refuses to let go until he is with her.

Scattered glass announces him. Putting a hand on the windowsill he looks down to her and then across to the man slumped in the driver’s seat.

Her eyes run over him in waves; he draws on the depth of the night they have traveled, searching out strength. 

The cold is so deep it makes the air whole. The world seems beyond the need for sound.

It is late, early. The ballet programme rests in the woman’s lap, the beautiful sweep of the ballerina’s arm stretched across the cover is matched by the arc of deep red that flows upward from the bottom of the glossy paper. 

She has raised her hand tentatively to her face, dabbed gently and retreated, not wanting to think of what the slow throbbing pain and warmth might mean. Her hands are placed deliberately back in her lap.

Taking his handkerchief from a deep pocket in one gentle, natural movement, he places his hand against the woman’s temple. The man’s eyes open and lock upon his.

He knows them, this man and this woman. He has been this man, in fragments. He has allowed women to be her, for him, in fragments.