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Charles RaffertyFirst DateThe punched mouth of the sky staggered into the trees above our table, and the waiter came over to see if we'd decided. You waved him off and said someone was sobbing in the ladies room. You saw her in there, and wondered if we should do something. I told you that privacy was what we'd all want at such a time, but you didn't look so sure. You said that she talked about angels, how they were all dead, and I imagined them dropping from the sky like shot swans striking the deck umbrellas, the coffee station. I decided to hold off telling you that I was the kind of guy who would order one up if it happened to be on the menu, that I'd gorge myself on its airy flesh. I told you instead to just pick a wine, to think about a walk later on by the stone-filled river that crashed unstoppably beyond our rail. And then your eyes gathered their grayness into two sharp points. You flagged the waiter down to say that now you knew. Red FlagOn the first cold night of the year, the field mice come scratching into our walls. The next day I put out the poison, and the town raises a red flag beside its only pond. The color of the flag reminds me of broken watermelon, overly ripe. There isn't even ice yet, but the people in charge of the flag need to be sure. Two years ago, a boy went under. Now the flag flies even when the ice is a foot thick. The mother of the dead boy haunts us. She enters the town bar and all eyes head into their drinks. We watch her in the mirror behind the counter, or in the reflection of the big front window that faces a town of parked cars. Some things cannot be looked at directly: the faintest stars, an oven door just opened. The poison I use is supposed to make the mice thirsty. They die on the way to a pond so beautiful we raised a family on its bank.
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