The End
- after Edward Hopper’s Summer Evening

Porch ceiling blue as waves. Dark green window shade, lit spot of waving grass. Blue shadows, green door. As if the young pair stand instead on a sea, in a sea, eyes cast down, minds at sea. It’d been a good night, a great night, but this was the end, the calendar swinging hard into the second half of August. Even now, how he ignored the cool breeze on his neck, she the thrill of goosebumps on her thighs where they met the drape of cotton skirt. Her family’s ten-week rental expired, her mother almost recovered in the good air. He told her he’d write, just like he’d told his brother after the trial. But he wouldn’t for the same reason he’d stopped writing letters to the prison. He couldn’t risk the unravelling, couldn’t face a story outside of this frame, this summer, this porch. His brother, his hero, that story broken. College was expensive; the gun wasn’t supposed to go off. He'll go on pretending his mother takes a pill now and then to help her sleep. That his dad had always wanted to retire early so he could get a deserved rest—in front of a snowy TV night after night. Their family’s dissolution will bloom slowly, then in hurried spurts, just like summer had moved. Hadn’t he and the girl he loved—yes, he loved her—been laughing together only hours ago, root beer floats sweating on the bar, straw catapults, the war between them sweet, the night endless?