Carmen K. Sisson

And so we slid into an easy, uneventful courtship: The kiss, the ring, the joining of libraries. He liked reading to me, and I liked laying my head on his chest, feeling the vibration of his voice as we curled in bed like commas, savoring the pleasure of a mutual love.

As days grow shorter, my memory lengthens, carrying me back to my youth. Crisp autumn mornings, dawn barely a suggestion, grandpa’s hand tousling my hair, reminding me the fish are waking, and I should be as well.

Her message is clear: You’re making a disaster of your life. I’m taking over now, and you’re dawdling. Shut up and walk.

If there was one thing I didn’t have that day, it was time. No time for things to go right, definitely no time for things to go wrong. But things were going to go wrong. Things were going to come to an absolute grinding halt.

Gone are the sticky, sultry-slick days of white-hot heat. Even the martins can feel it as they wait in the gathering dusk, cock their heads toward the wind and listen for the call. A cool breeze sends them spinning on their perch and they struggle a moment then give way to flight — glorious flight — black dots in the star-heavy sky.

Today, empty warehouses dot the landscape beside the trestle, a testimony to the city’s early years as a booming purveyor of cotton. Softly, the winter sun steals across clumps of goldenrod, outlines the trestle’s wood and steel frame and hints at another existence.