When it comes down to praying, you know that it won’t be all right. You can see in the near future a funeral for a friend, and their poor pale personage, the recent cadaver, won’t even be able to look at you, because she has managed somehow to close her beautiful brown eyes, and that breaks the heart.

I wanted to go up to her once more and greet her. Say hello, what’s up, nmu? I wanted for her to talk about her college boyfriend, their one year anniversary, which is from here to eternity in high school. Their eyes contrasted so. According to her, his were small and blue, and hers were big and brown. In her own words, “The color of mud.” I wanted horribly to stare at mud all day, wanted to open her eyes again and be condemned.

Could I be brave enough to touch her broken hand? I poked it, a jab at first, and then suddenly I found myself holding her delicate frame in my arms, and my own eyes were beginning to act up like Laurence Olivier onstage. My fault. All my fault. Hadn’t I run her over? Hadn’t I missed her somehow? Hadn’t I run the stop sign? Hadn’t she been walking down the road in the dead of night? Why were we both out at two Ante-Meridian? And what could I do now?

And, in the words of the immortal Elton John, love lies bleeding in my hands. I could prove it. My hands were not this glowing crimson color before. She was a figure to be adored and adulated in my closed adolescent mind. She was Adonisette.

Was.

Was.

Was is the cruelest verb, I thought. It means…well, like Farragut said, “Damn the philosophical and grammatical implications, full speed ahead.”

I picked up my cell and dialed bottom right, top left, top left.

“Hello?” I died inside.

Several seconds passed. “Is there anybody there?”

“Yes, yes, I would like to report an accident,” I choked.

“Where?”

“Where Northgate meets Towne.”

“City?”

“Voorhees.”

“Any injuries?”

“I’ve killed somebody.”