Blonde Girl

There was a blonde girl riding a bike downtown. She had headphones in her ears, iPod cranked. Possibly, she was chewing gum, pores drinking in early summer sun. Pedaling to the rhythm of life is good.

She forgot to watch where she was going, which turned out to be straight into the bug-splattered grill of a Pepsi truck. Instant death.

She left behind a sneaker on the road, a mangled ten-speed. Because she didn’t have any identification, her name became Jane Doe and she went straight to the morgue. Someone said to the local paper, “What’s horrible is this girl is dead and no one even knows it yet.”

A few days later, her roommates claimed her. She was from out of state, summering at the beach where she got paid to take pictures at a bar, on the sand.

The blonde girl had just graduated from college. Her life was endless future, open as the night sky. In the fall, she was going to do something with her life. Make her own name.