SCOTT WITHIAM
He turned and whatever blew into his head. "Spring talks intimacy all summer, but fall is really it," he said. That's because with their clothes dropped the trees were exposed. Exposed, they looked like the veins on the back of the hand. "Your hands are in my face." He said that because there was no privacy in his tight little neighborhood, especially in the fall. All the green cover gone, neighbors' houses inched closer, so close that he lived in all of them. "And all our sad sides," he said, looking at the houses. "Hell, pile 'em on." These weren't leaves swirling around the yard, but those curled foam hospital slippers. The whole crowded walk-in hospital was on its way. As it will, the fall light dimmed as if some rheostat had been turned next to off. A young woman out cold on a Gurney and intended for post-op rolled into his yard. "Day surgery," he said. In the last light of the day, her white bedding cast a pulsing glow. He had an urge to bend down and kiss her, but knew better than that. "Lawsuit," he said. Soon she would wake disoriented and want something for the pain. He had nothing but a rake.
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