--for Kelly

           We would see them at night at the far end of their yard, back near the fence that separated us from the busy oil field. They would sit there in the last of the day, the sun dipped low and far away, shining orange and pink in the windows in the fronts of our houses, their backs to us, leaning over, perhaps to hear one another better or some head-to-head intimacy they shared only between themselves.

            So many of us had moved in and out of the surrounding houses, the neighborhood changing bit-by-bit over the years. So many stories shared over fences and barbecue grills and smoldering fire pits. But none of us really knew them. Not their stories or their lives or really all that much about them. We’d see them. Maybe he’d be dragging the garbage barrel to the curb, or she’d be crossing the street toward the community mailbox, when once, long before any of us were here, mailmen would walk from house to house to stick the mail in door slots, maybe knock with a package, a bit of conversation, his kids in college now, our azaleas or roses or tulips looking particularly fetching this year, a Holiday thank-you envelope.

            Because there had been so many changes before we came but certainly many since we’d been here, in the neighborhood, next door to them or across the street, a couple houses down, maybe. They’d been here before some of us had even been born.

            And yet, as each new family moved in, we would hear about them, a new neighbor with a welcoming plate of cookies or a casserole catching us up. They dotted our early conversations and our parting ones, as well, as our families grew and more rooms were needed, the moving vans and goodbye parties and the sweet, tear-filled promises we’d stay in touch, though we rarely did.

            We heard he built that bench for them some years back, a retirement present or commemoration, perhaps. He’d been an engineer, and she’d been a secretary at the high school across town, not the one nearby where our children graduated, or at least most of them did. But really, we didn’t know much more.

            They were never secretive, just private. And there’s a difference. Secrecy is when you have something you want to hide, where privacy is where you have nothing you want to share.

            But we’d see them in the shadows, their backs silhouetted by the setting sun behind them, their shoulders close, sweating beverages on the bench on either side of them, and we wondered if we, too, might someday be lucky enough to have a love as strong as theirs, someone to share a bench with.

            And so, we were saddened when that Cessna missed the landing strip in the busy oil field in the shadowy evening, plowing them down on their bench, barreling into their home and igniting it.

From Milly Mahoney-Dell'Aquila: