by Dave Clapper
The yellow arrows on the pavement split to left and right, defining the acceptable movements of vehicles. And for a while, I’m immobilized, thinking of a butterfly flapping its wings. A typhoon I don’t want to create, so I sit in my car, studying the arrows. And I think then of my exhaust and of the Greenhouse Effect (especially because my particular automobile mocks emissions tests), and realize that not moving is a butterfly flapping its wings just as surely as turning is. And I’m jolted into action, but still haven’t made a choice. I shift my foot from the brake to the gas and the car leaps forward, splitting the arrows. We jump a curb, the car and I, and obliterate a hedge, its branches clawing at the Mitsubishi’s undercarriage, living people buried and trying to come back. The back wheels then leap the curb as the front wheels bounce down from another. Cars and trucks honk out of our way, my car and me, and we find our way across a street and into the wall of a gas station’s mini-mart. Coming to almost-rest, hood crumpled, steam rises. A butterfly observes the carnage and veers right.
