Dan and Dina Avoid Danger

Dina and Dan talk to their father about their mother. She is deteriorating so quickly. We will build a ramp but no we won't, she won't be back for a long while.

Mother dies in the flower garden over and over again, a memory they watch play out everyday from the inside of the sliding glass door. They watch and listen, see her back give way, watch the paper boy on his stupid BMX bike that looks like a child's whip the paper across the lawn, up the drive way, almost but not quite to the garage door. Fine, it was a fine throw, he keeps peddling, paying no mind to the woman in the garden that is now bent over, elbows on knees, hands on knees, panting, panting. They are watching, they are watching.

Between the two houses grew a fantastic row of aspens that guided their way, they lived among those aspens, they shift color as in look and look, they shift color, it is a different season. The way they looked out the window at the 70 foot tree on the other side of the street, even for the suburbs.

Dina and Dan's father and mother sit them down and talk to them, tell them that they have disappeared or are about to disappear, they are going to disappear any second they tell them their whole lives, we will all go up to the sky one day, a nondescript sky, a nondescript day.

We will all go up to the sky, what does that mean, what does that mean? We will all go up to the sky that day, what day and what will happen, Dina asks, what will happen in the sky and her father slaps her across the face, don't ever ask about what will happen, don't ever ask again.

Mother dies and we have dreams we never had before. We have dreams, what does this mean.

Dina and Dan pretend nothing happens. They are on the city bus and a woman ahead of them drops her oxygen tank and it hits the ground and no one helps her and she can't breathe and there are men in front of us that are closer and have more access to her and they will not help. Dan begins to rise but finally she says can someone help me and yes of course someone can help you and one of the men puts down his paper and grabs her tanks and hands it to her but it was very unclear what she wanted help with, wasn't it? Dina asks, I think so.