Whodunit

Abstract

WHODUNIT / Elizabeth Spires Like a photographer developing a photograph, slipping the light-sensitive paper into solution until the image rises, clear as a piece of evidence, day rises slowly out of dawn, each tree dripping with mist, leaning toward the house with mute, inarticulate secrets, new leaves suffusing the rooms with the green light of memory, green's utter recall. The day is a question mark, unpredictable as the detective novel you were reading last night: a car on a hairpin curve skidding toward a guardrail, a woman pushed from a second story window who may be guilty or innocent. The book lies face down on the table beside the glass of water and the sleeping pills, open to the page where you left off reading, so that she falls and continues to fall all night, silently screaming, an unfinished, interrupted dream with only one possible ending. Below the yard is brightening, long shadows lie like stains in the grass. You sleep unaware Tm not beside you, the sound of a pen scratching out a message on paper, a car door slamming, a shout, making their way into your dreams, the first clues that the day may or may not turn out as you expected coming to you in sleep, gentle, insistent, veiled. The Missouri Review · 252 ...