The last women I had sex with died in a car crash four days ago

The last woman I had sex with died in a car crash four days ago

Jeff Thomas

The dawn was orange and dim when I rolled away from her. I walked out the door, never saying goodbye.

The air was thick, a low fog covered seas of soybeans on either side of M-21. Quiet, eastbound, 6:06 a.m. Sunday morning.

The Times Herald article said she’d been an all-conference volleyball player, she was coaching the JV girls at her old high school. There were pictures of teenagers decorating a cross on the side of the road, mothers

holding their children. Her father, having swallowed all the words, stared down at the pavement.

I got low reading it. Sore. Ashamed. She was a stranger reaching into the night. I hope she forgot my face as soon as I walked out. Her’s is branded inside me, foating alongside details of her life I was never meant to know.

Shpresa Ymeraj