A Death

Flesh and blood. concrete. How often we meet. My sister's neighbor smashed his skull wide open the other night. The blood bloomed around his head like a sad, steamy-warm merlot melting the ice. Six feet down. I imagine it making a hollow sound that echoed off the brick and stone of the buildings on 5th street - a small bit of steam curling around his upper lip, dissipating past the snowflakes, the freezing rain.

On second thought, it may have looked like full head of red hair burst from his zenith, or that his veins crept out of the hole and into the cracks of the ice and the sidewalk - running from his heart - coagulating, freezing, then sleeping. He is dead now. I didn't know him, but I saw him once. My sister said he didn't own anything aside from a bench press, a couch, and a small white television.