Emily Vance Brown

It’ll happen like this:

You will scrape the ice 
off the windshield. 
Slow, at first, carefully. 
You will shovel the snow 
into neat little piles for your kids 
to scavenge for snowmen after school. 
You will climb into the mid-size SUV, silver,
and wring out your dripping wet jeans. 
You will turn the key but the car won’t start. 

The car won’t start.

You will sigh, and sit back, and sigh. 
You will sit for a long time. 
You will think about the failures 
that preceded this one and the minor 
destinies that led you to this 
episode of the multiverse. 
You’ll think about your wife, 29, blonde hair, 
brown eyes, five-foot-five in her kitten heels 
that clack against the fake hardwood vinyl 
of the home you bought when she was only 25. 
You will open the car door, releasing a blast 
of icy cold into cold, then, 
you will close it again. 
You will consider dying, 
but not like that. 
You will consider dying in the sense 
that this man is already dead. 
You killed him seventeen years ago,
buried him in the backyard next to
Lucy the chihuahua and the tomb 
of the unknown raccoon. 
You will remember the boy 
who helped you dig the grave: 
sweat stains bleeding dark green 
down the neckline of his olive tee and 
the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and 
the warmth of his hands on yours on the shovel. 
You will envision a flash of eternity in this 
millisecond of memory and 
you will breathe for the first time since you were twenty-three. 
Gasping, heaving breaths. 

This is how it begins.