The First Time We Parted   The first time we parted — should I have seen more than I saw? Men are such dogs, we just see what we want to see — barely that. Green winter jacket, cinched at the waist, a gust of cold, cold wind blowing her gypsy curls across her face (too stubborn for a hat, so vain about that hair), slow shuffling, her long body bent — with sadness, she would later explain. She didn’t know I was watching. At least, that’s what she said, when this prologue had ended, and we knew we were caught up in a long, long story — all hello, I thought, never goodbye. Well, at least I saw that much: this is what goodbye looks like.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont January 2010