Life in an Instant

It was raining. Cold. Windy. The duct tape on my front bumper had been ripped off by the elements of late Michigan fall (or early winter), and I was in the middle of taping it back on, wiping the bumper dry with my hat and applying tape in perpendicular stitches. Stitching up the wound.

A car nudged into the space beside me. An alarm was set off in the back of my mind, and I jerked out of the way, giving a hard look into the driver's side window. An elderly man stared back at me. He looked sorry. I bent down on one knee to commence the delicate operation again. The sky melting against my skin and sliding uncomfortably into the folds of my T-shirt.

My black jacket was dripping. Jeans. Brown shoes. On the pavement, my hands shoved under my wide Oldsmobile Cutlass, oil clinging to the moist pores of my skin, a strange old man watching and staring, people exiting the Rite-Aid in front of me, entering, exiting again--I sighed.

Finally wrapping the tape into a rope and tying the bumper to an underside pipe, I sat back and wiped my hands on my pants. Hopefully, I thought, it'll hold for another four hours...