Chris Greene

Chris Greene

Art
Kim Salac
Media Staff

It’s not alright and it hasn’t been alright, not since you yelled at me over flowers, but the flowers weren’t really the issue.

I watched her break and bend, her ankles, they were crushed, her knees buckled in.

I watched her break and bend, her ankles, they were crushed, her knees buckled in.

And I wondered what man could do that until one day I looked out, and the 10 karat necklace flew out of my hand, into Chris Greene Lake. 

The emerald of the stone matched the deep green of the water, and I couldn’t watch it float down. The sun hit the rippling surface where I tossed it with such intensity that I thought maybe it didn’t want me to watch. What does that mean? 

I guess you meant it when you said over and over that you’d replace me with someone younger by my next birthday, I just didn’t think she’d be fresh out of high school gym class and I’d be writing away on law school applications. 

I wonder what happened to my pink fishing bait in your tackle bag, if she uses it now, and I wonder if you compare my poor line throws to hers—you were always the one to never look at your own. I had to think through pushing the line down with my pointer finger (maybe it was my thumb), and I concentrated on letting the weight of the bait go around my shoulder and into the air, arced well enough to land where I wanted it to (or, at least I said that’s where I wanted it to go). It’s February first, not even fishing season yet, but I sometimes still dream about the boat ride in mid-Summer—the one where I was trying so hard to make you happy I nearly burst under the heat of the sun. Everything was compounding, intensifying, breaking. But that line throw, right?