fiction –

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.”— William Blake

The light in the car is bright. They are parked on top of a hill, with a view of the city to their right. She looks over to her left and watches as he pours liquor from his flask into a small cup. When the cup is a third filled, he stops, closes the flask, and places it back in the glove compartment.

As he reaches over, his hands brush her knees. Not hard, but enough to bring chills up to the surface of her skin.

An image of when they went to Santa Barbara and picniced on the beach flashes across across his vision . The sun overhead, the cloudless sky, laid out under an umbrella, eating homemade sandwiches brought with them in a basket.

In the car, high above the city, she takes his right hand, and looks at it in the light.
“Your hands look like they build things” she says.

Then, she takes a breath and exhales slowly through her nose. She looks into his eyes.

“I’m pregnant,” she says.

He looks at her and smiles. “I love you,” he says. “With everything I have, I love you.”

That night, they lay still, awake, without a word between them, in the cool darkness of their room.

At five in the morning he gets up and goes for a run around the park near their place. As he runs back up the hill and toward the front steps of the building, he turns around, and sits to watch the sun rise.

He thinks about his brother, face down on the kitchen floor on the morning of his 19th birthday. The night he overdosed and died and all of the sadness that came with that moment, that day, that year.

He puts on a pot of coffee, and at seven-thirty, kisses his wife on the forehead and moves toward the front door.

As he arrives at work, he sends a text – I love you very very much.