Perfect Day

by Linda Simoni-Wastila

Later, much later, when the shock wore off, people always asked, "Where were you?" That Tuesday, the one morning of the week I didn't have to rush out to lecture the undergrad minions or schlep glassware and prep slides for lab, found me in my kitchen, coffee and The Globe sprawled before me, relaxed, happy even. "One of the ten best days of the year," the weatherman promised earlier when my willing feet swept me along the Charles River, the dawn cracking into a shocking blue canvas. But the adrenalin rush soon eroded, it always does, and aloneness and self-doubt rippled through the small apartment, pricking at me to flip on the dusty ten-inch tube, a relic from the latest in a string of relationship disasters dating back to my birth. Mindless, chirpy babble filled the empty space, assuaging my weariness, but then a voice, urgent, almost tinny, erupted through my anesthesia and when I swiveled around, flames coiled around the tower, the white, billowing smoke obscured the building's twin, highlighting the minute, black specks flailing from the gaping, windowless floors, even the ninetieth, his office. And as the building telescoped into itself, smudging the faultless sky with its smoldering detritus, I vaguely wondered if my father was in Japan.

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Linda Simoni-Wastila, author of Love Song on the Inner Loop, plays with words whenever she can. This little ditty comes from PURE, a novel currently under destruction. Read more of her blah-blah-blah here.