BUS

On my way to school, a bus skidded off the road and fell down the ravine. It was not our school bus but another bus for another school. I knew the school from my friend Homme, who lived in the next town over. I wondered if she was on the bus when it veered off the edge. In all honesty, I didn’t have the guts or the stomach to go check it. I stood pat on the side of the road, pretending nothing had happened. I looked up at the sky, but it was speckless other than a few lazy birds and some stray clouds. A big blue of nothing. Only a horizon to reach over and touch. One step after the other. Eyes fixed forward.

COAT

I bought a duffle coat from a thrift store in Bushwick that claimed to sell secondhand celebrity items. The piece was a beautiful navy blue, tag still on, its lining crisp as though it hadn’t been touched before. I ran my fingers over the buttons and wondered whom it used to belong to. At home, I reached in the pocket and found a slip of paper: Call me if you still remember. No name, no number. I tried the coat on, walked around the apartment with swagger, trying to catch glimpses of myself in mirrors. The coat fit in the arms but hung oddly at the waist, like it’d been tailored for someone a bit taller, bonier. Still, I felt like a celebrity in it, some under-appreciated Britpop guitarist, presumed dead at 27. I hummed a few bars of a song I half-remembered from my childhood and let the sleeves swallow my hands. I stowed the note away into a drawer somewhere. Sometimes, when I go on a date, I wear the coat. Sometimes I almost remember.

FOUNTAIN

You claimed the fountain in the city square was new, but I objected that it was always there. “No,” you said, “they installed it just last week. It was all over the news.” We stood by the fountain’s basin, watching the spurts of water loop in hesitant arcs. A child approached and asked if we’d seen her coin. We peered into the fountain together, scanning the gleam. You pointed at a moss-ridden penny, but she shook her head. I wondered if my own coin was in there somewhere, like a secret I’d long forgotten. When we looked up, the child was gone, and so was most of the day. We hailed a cab back home and split the fare.