SUMMER OF ‘74
richard osgood
It lay between them like a toppled geranium, dirt and stem and shattered terracotta, the crash of guilt and remorse on mirage pavement from Manchester to White River Junction, where campers and canoe-topped station wagons exit at places like Sutton and Sunapee and Georges Mills, miles behind her the humorless doctor with cold hands and rubber words—dilation and curettage—instruments of finality scrape remnants of first love and fluttered loins into a stainless steel pan, the shape of which reminds her of a banana split, and there beside her the boy who doesn't hold her hand or wipe away her tears but rambles on and on about senior year and ski team and how they should just be friends.
Richard Osgood
r.osgood@fuse.net
Underworld
Don DeLillo