Lunch Break #1

Joan chose the shirt because the color reminded her of orange juice, of Florida. She’d spent those sun-drenched days of youth along the St. Johns River, seeking comfort in the woody notes of bald cypresses. This was during a stint when her father, whom everyone called The Admiral, was stationed out of Mayport. That was long before the accident. Before she’d told so many lies, she no longer knew the truth. But she’d landed in Ohio, penniless, now moving along a calicoed crosswalk, shirt like a tattered sail in an unseasonably crisp June breeze.