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Drive It must have seemed to him a sign of his secret health that he could drive into the city to pick up his friend who’d flown in to see him off for what more clearly signifies vitality than a stream of cars until they become traffic, rushing over asphalt each to its singular destination — interview, date — any event suggesting a going-on but also a possible opening-up, life swerving — new job, new love, piling up unforeseen signs and exits all with the rest of my life in front that mostly we prefer to call forever, as in “I will love you forever.” So when he pulled up to the pick up passenger zone I was unprepared for his glow. I expected terminal to have tamped him down, sallowed his skin but he was so much the same John I couldn’t imagine then how he could get from how he looked to dead in the time they gave him. It must have seemed to him I was just along for the ride. My life was without weight so we could fly past triple-length trucks in the girdle grip of a viaduct that spit us out on the high flat tail of a bus. I couldn’t say slow down and rise to reveal my pettiness. The matter was delicate. Nothing to lose, much, he must have thought he would show me just how easy it could be.  ...

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