I Would Like To Tell You That

She Was Unaware That She Was Somewhat Of A Celebrity Up In Heaven. I Had Told People About Her, What She Did, How She Observed Moments Of Silence Up And Down The City And Wrote Small Individual Prayers In Her Journal, And The Story Had Travelled So Quickly That Women Lined Up To Know She Had Found Where They’d Been Killed. She Had Fans In Heaven..... Meanwhile, For Us, She Was Doing Important Work, Work That Most People On Earth Were Too Frightened Even Too Contemplate.

My Name Is Salmon, Like The Fish; First Name, Susie. I Was Fourteen When I Was Murdered.

I Was In The Air Around Him. I Was In The Cold Mornings He Had Now. I Was In The Quiet Time He Spent Alone. I Was The Girl He Had Chosen To Kiss. He Wanted, Somehow To Set Me Free. -susie Salmon

I Couldn't Help But Think, As I Watched Him, Of The Barrels Of Toxic Fluids That Had Accrued Behind Hal's Bike Shop Where The Scrub Lining The Railroad Tracks Had Offered Local Companies Enough Cover To Dump A Stray Contaner Or Two. Everything Had Been Sealed Up, But Things Were Beginning To Leak Out. I Had Come To Both Pity And Respect Len In The Years Since My Mother Left. He Followed The Physical To Try To Understand Things That Were Impossible To Comphrehend. In That, I Could See, He Was Like Me.

Learn A Language Of Another Country And Then You Can Go To That Country: A Place Where The Problems Of Your Family Will Not Follow. A Language They Do Not Speak.