We’re both on this plane back to Cleveland.
She tells me that I should be careful traveling like I do but to never stop.
She tells me that I have kind eyes.
She tells me that I remind her of her son.
I’ve barely said a word.
She tells me that she thinks her marriage was a mistake.
that it was a young and dumb decision,
that she’s thought about ending it so many times in their 45 years together.
But after the diagnosis she thought about it less and less until the idea of leaving had become like a handsome stranger in a used bookstore.
and so she’d settled into the routine of tending her broken love as it transitioned into hospice,
and away from the back porches of their succeeding 3 houses where they had both loved to lick salt, drink tequila, and listen to Cleveland Indians games on the radio.
Starting back when Herb Score was calling games with Nev Chandler.
When you could still get tickets for $4.45 and most of Municipal Stadium’s seats would stand empty and you could sit on the dugout roof and chat with the players between innings.
even pass cigarettes back and forth and ask Pat Corrales when he’s gonna give us a winning season..
Herb’s dead now.
so is Nev for that matter.
gone at 47 from the same cancer that’s eating her husband's colon from the inside.
And now her eyes reflect the clouds in my window,
and now her hair is the color of a burning barn
who’s flames have finally cooled.
Dang!