Specificity

My brother got hit by a bus while riding his bike
on Columbus Avenue.
He was carrying puddings
to a friend’s dinner party, holding the bag
with two fingers of his right hand.
The bag dangled
under the handlebars.
The puddings are what people refer to
as something you couldn’t make up.
Inside each moment, a universe
of possible futures collapses
down to just one.
Actual details (like puddings) retain traces
of this collapse, of all the things
that didn’t happen
as well as the exact things that did.
A good storyteller can simulate
the bracing specificity of the real.
But can anyone make
fictional details glimmer
with the light of so many ghosts?
I didn’t make up the puddings.
Though I did fudge it a bit
when I referenced the accident’s location.
Time and a habit of looking away
have made it all hazy.
It doesn’t matter.
Columbus is scenery — block after block
of apartments and condos, and the restaurants
that residents go to
when they go outside.
A friend says that in Stockholm, apartments
are so small that everyone
uses nearby cafes
as living rooms.
A little of that happens
on some stretches of Columbus, but mostly,
people seem to have places to get to.

ξ

Alan Baer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works to bring digital techniques to Democratic state legislative candidates. This is his first publication.