Ghosts of Breath
Howie Good

I was sitting on the curb, resting, when my father called. "We've lost your mother," he moaned. Where could she be? I got back on my bike and rode down to the pond. The swans hadn't seen her. Neither had the winos sleeping under the bushes. A plane passed high overhead as if on a bombing run. I got out of my car. It was a neighborhood of mud streets and old stone houses. I stood gazing through a window, marveling at the changing colors of the flames. The town constable caught me. "Move on!" he barked. He raised his club threateningly. And now I'll never know whether the woman who lived there with her shadow had just left or was about to arrive.

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