tonight's piece

OK, copout entry. Here's what I wrote in Big Yellow tonight. It ends pretty abruptly...I just couldn't get it to finish. Oh, and my FRFF ticket arrived today...joy of joys!

Sara climbed into her new car for the first time. She had surrendered to the fact that life in Massachusetts mean snow--sometimes lots of snow. She also acknowledged that the winding, rolling streets that led from her house to the highway simply did not get plowed. The town clearly didn't care that even after 15" of snow, she still had to get to work. So Sara had traded in the car that had been a faithful companion during the three toughest years of her life...the car that saw her cry and heard her rail against God; the car that brought her across the country, back to the side of the world where things made sense. Her new car hadn't proven itself yet, but it had the ever-important All Wheel Drive.

Before she drove away, leaving a trusted traveling companion behind in the dealership parking lot, Sara took a faded black armband out of her pocket and slipped it around the gearshift. It was the last thing she had taken out of her old car, and the first thing to go into this new one. As she drove away, she ran her fingers over the letters, carefully applied in white puffy paint, "IFK."

Four years earlier, Sara and her friend Nancy sat in Sara's classroom, in tiny chairs at tiny desks, carefully lettering 40 black Nike armbands. It felt productive in a week filled with helplessness. The armbands were for the 7th and 8th grade girls basketball team that Sara and Nancy coached together, and for the boys team as well. It had been the kids' idea, a way of honoring their friend and classmate Francis and his siblings. Three days earlier, Francis and his 1 year old sister Kadeisha were badly injured, caught in the crossfire of gang violence. Their 7 year old brother Isaiah had been killed.

if you're lucky, you find something that reflects you, helps (the hudson, dar williams)