The woman with the red hat checked her phone. A text message read: “I got your message.”
She walked into the shadows. She reached high for color. She drew a branch down, plucked an orange then another orange and then another orange and put them into her purse, one by one.
I got your message.
The street lights passed to the beat of the road’s surface, which was disfigured, rough but rhythmic. She played the voice mail without taking her eyes from the road: “. . . I was kinda surprised . . . ” The green signs were drawn small, very small, to large, very large, just as they slipped out of view of the wind shield. Before rain came.
I was kinda surprised.
She reached into the shadows with her shears and snipped at a stem slightly above a large thorn. When she did so, when it fell, evening broke through the new gap and printed a flower on the gravel nearby.
“Whatever you want, I guess that’ll be alright with me,” he said. “I’ll talk to you.”
I’ll talk to you.
I’ll talk to you.
I’ll talk to you.
The phone slipped from the front of the seat to the gap, coming to rest beside the oranges wobbling there to the road’s rhythm. The heated daylight passed across the dials, gleamed on the metal shifter, turned wood into chrome. She turned the brim down on her red hat for protection. She followed the curve of the road into the morning sun.
“I got your message,” she said.
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