Barbara Westwood Diehl ~ Four Pieces

After Math

Were we ever the alge­bra­ic equa­tion we thought we were. Symmetric at each step. A mar­riage of tuxe­do, satin dress. Matched as brack­ets. As paren­the­ses of veil, lapels, clasped hands. A math­e­mat­i­cal cer­tain­ty. At least a par­a­digm for cer­tain­ty. The best we had at the time. Untested. An exchange of hypothe­ses and gold rings.

Were we ever two expres­sions bal­anced across a chi­na plate. Without vari­ables. Without the x. And y. Was there ever an equal sign cen­tered like a but­ter­cream rose on our per­fect square of cake. Could our cir­cum­fer­ence ever be mea­sured with radii. And were you the irra­tional pi, or was I. And why.

Were we ever indi­vis­i­ble. Were we ever whole. A round num­ber. A total from which to cal­cu­late a tip with ease. With gen­eros­i­ty. After a toast—to us!—and can­dlelit din­ner. Were we ever expo­nen­tial. More than sums of anniver­saries. Sums of pro­mo­tions, vaca­tions on the coast. Degrees, framed and hung. A sum of us.

Were we ever more than dots on a scat­ter plot. The popped bal­loons of data. Confetti tossed along a plot­ted line. Testing, test­ing, test­ing the rela­tion­ships of vari­ables. Touching you here, touch­ing me there. Along an axis of years. An exper­i­ment we repli­cate. Extrapolate. Another edu­cat­ed guess. Another slice of wed­ding cake.

~

Northbound Train

Unlike the oth­er train pas­sen­gers, who look down at the papers in their laps, the mid­dle man­ag­er stares out the win­dow at a train going in the oppo­site direc­tion. He thinks, I could have pur­chased a tick­et going north. At home, his wife is bak­ing a bee­fa­roni casse­role. Buttered peas. Because it is Wednesday. He won­ders what din­ner would be if he had tak­en the train to Boston. If his des­ti­na­tion wasn’t always this sta­tion in the mid­dle of an East Coast route. At Penn Station in Baltimore, he begins to fold his news­pa­per into thirds, as he has always done. The work­day with its for­eign and domes­tic wars tucked neat­ly inside. Then stops, stands, and spills the tired head­lines onto his seat. At the tick­et win­dow, he buys a tick­et for a north­bound train. He thinks of din­ner menus. Daily spe­cials that change on a whim.

~

Cereal Box

The child want­ed the sweet cere­al, the choco­late stuff, let’s say Coco Puffs. Cereal that no moth­er should want her child to eat. Candy in a box. So the child and moth­er turned this bat­tle of wills into a tug of war. The child was much stronger than I expect­ed. Or the moth­er enjoyed the strug­gle. I don’t think she wor­ried about dam­ag­ing the box. The woman was play­act­ing the part of respon­si­ble moth­er. I could tell. She glanced from side to side, as if she knew she had an audi­ence. Which, of course, she did. Other moth­ers about the same age, like me, with chil­dren of our own. Children with their own wills burst­ing at the seams. The box broke, as it had to break, and Coco Puffs flew all over the aisle. We all stopped our carts, afraid of crush­ing the cere­al. Which, of course, was ridicu­lous. As if any of it, any of us, could be put back in the box.

~

Switchback

She watch­es her hus­band from the cold mar­ble floor of the hotel lob­by. He ascends the stair­case like a moun­tain climber, plant­i­ng each foot on a step as if it’s a rock ledge, slick with black ice. Clutches the brass handrail. Grips the trekking pole. Gets his bear­ings in this new alti­tude. Breathes in what­ev­er oxy­gen it gifts. He makes it to the land­ing and turns. A switch­back. Before he dis­ap­pears, he lets go of the handrail, briefly, and waves down at her. Regret? His eyes are still wet from the unex­pect­ed snow. That morn­ing, in their bed, she had heard his errat­ic heart. The wren songs in his chest. She swings his duf­fel onto her back, along with the load she already car­ries, and approach­es the unblazed trail ahead. She hears hawks cir­cling prey above the hotel’s domed light.

~

Barbara Westwood Diehl is senior edi­tor of The Baltimore Review. Her fic­tion and poet­ry appear in a vari­ety of jour­nals, includ­ing Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Poetry South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Five South, Allium, Split Rock Review, Blink-Ink, Midway, Free State Review, Ghost Parachute, and Pithead Chapel.