We shared a bottle of strawberry wine in your pickup truck down by the old bridge. I wanted that day to last forever. I closed my eyes to keep you from reading my unutterable happiness that I should be there with you, resting my head on your thigh like it belonged there.
I heard you were killed in Iraq. I came home to put flowers on your grave.
Instead, I ran into you in the diaper aisle with a cartful of toddler food. You didn’t see me. I added strawberry wine when you weren’t looking. For old time’s sake.
Epiphany Ferrell‘s writing career includes gigs at a coonhound magazine, a couple of newspapers and a university communications team. Her stories appear in The Potomac: A Journal of Poetry & Politics, Clamor 2015, Cooper Street, PaperTape Magazine, Prairie Wolf Press Review, DarkFire, Seven Hills Review, Helix Literary Magazine, Corvus Review, and other places. She makes her home with dogs, cats, chickens and horses — and a couple of important people — at Resurrection Mule Farm in Southern Illinois.
A Quiet Courage 