In Flight for Beth
Perhaps it was the fiery redness of her hair—a tremendous shock, shining on a March Sunday afternoon—that chased me from the realm of daring. Or perhaps it was seeing her sitting on the concrete stoop by her apartment door, barefoot, sunning, before an afternoon of French conjugations and calculus sets, safe within a weathered fenced-in plot, large enough for two to travel through at a time, secreting away that she would soon leave this place. Or perhaps it was due to the truth that she never spoke to me and certainly never thought of me when we passed one another in our school’s clustered halls that I took her glancing away as a hint at a hidden passion—but so goes the delusional mind when that inconvenient burn and flush about my face challenged the ruddiness of her hair. Perhaps silence chased me from the weird realm of daring. So damned am I to live with internal fires in ‘78! No, I had to go and let loose burnings. Make then public—dash all fears of fear—let the furnace within bellow out on the radio, a song request on the Saturday night song dedication show. There! That seemed a veracious move. Play Spanky’s gang of flower power troubadours, “Like to get to know you,” spinning wax straight into night airwaves dedicated the night before I saw her last on the concrete stoop, sunning, barefoot, her shock of red gleaming, her name called out by a friend, holding a chipped wooden tennis racket ready to play in avoidance of love. Yes, her name called out, a voice saying, ‘Hi Beth,’ strong enough whip my feet up into an elegant stumble, me, oh yes, me, in flight for Beth, floating head first into the friend’s empty metal refuse can—with only my legs and blue jeaned rump in view—affirmation that another ardor need be tossed aside, both body and soul rolled, rolled away to the dump.
Author: Les Epstein
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