Wednesday, February 20, 2013

A Tragedy in Short Form

I remember seeing somewhere, some when, what was billed as the shortest tragedy ever written.  Two sentences. Six words.  Rumored to have been written by Ernest Hemingway. 
For sale: baby shoes.  Never worn. 
While sitting at a light in traffic, vegging, not looking at anything, and waiting for things to move, somehow the car in front of me caught my attention.  In the rear window of a nice pickup truck one of those decals, of a form that's pretty common around here:
In loving memory
<name>
8/23/04 - 11/24/04
It sunk in.  Three months??  Immediately below, on the tailgate, this.
A short story. A tragedy. Three words, two dates and a magnet.  A marker for the holes in two hearts. 


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