April 24, 2008 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or Winner of Two |
From our readersMissing in Action My brother thought that he had found a solution to the problem of me missing my senior prom because you were in Vietnam. He called up someone I hadn’t seen since I had saved him from drowning years before. My last image of him was that of a bone thin body shaking with sobs, the sobs of a killer which he almost was, of me. It seems he had imagined when I jumped in to help him that I was a life raft; We both looked better prom night. He had stopped sobbing and was a little less skinny. I was not blue nor gasping for air. It was his turn to save me from drowning I was drowning too in thoughts of you. The orchid pinned to my dress became your jungle. The music became our song; “Shots Firing in the Distance.” Instead of dancing, I was crawling. crawling through the jungle to you so, together, we would listen to; “Shots Firing in the Distance.” They sent you home from the jungle early. They called me from the hospital thinking I could help you that I could break through your day-by-day staring at the wall continuously chanting my name. When I went there you looked at me didn’t see me: just kept repeating my name over and over again in a whisper. I said doctor, please, turn that record off in his head, the one called “Shots Firing in the Distance.”
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