Do you want to die?

                     she looked directly into his eyes  took hers off the highway

No I do not   he had always been completely harshly honest with her

she did

         she wasnt responding to her psychologist psychiatrist their treatments the drugs

I didn’t think so.

they passed under an overpass past its steelreinforced vertical concrete embankment

they approached others

it was LA

he wasnt out of the woods

every quarter mile or so she could kill them

he wasnt going to say it again

                               he saw the glint in her eye seen it in his platoons eyes immortal eighteen year olds he couldnt say how many immortals he hurled them body parts dogtags into Medevac Hueys under fire

he didnt go with them

                          he didnt act immortal

her look was cold cleareyed dared Call my bluff.

she wasnt bluffing

theyd been married twenty years within a week of him returning from in-country justice of the peace high school sweethearts they went steady he proposed in the light of day the day before he was inducted she waited she suffered his letterletters filthy with mud junglesometimes spattered with bloodhe sent them anyway

                                                                                                      they were real deal when everything around him seemed surreal

he didnt bluff

she wouldnt

Do you want to die?

to this day hes never asked that of himself

0933 or 1133, he preferred 0933,  Monday,  3  1. 22