FOREVER CHANGED

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

In previous years, Dave was prevented by self-consciousness regarding his height and anxiety surrounding his academic performance from undertaking the arduous task of experiencing deep emotions centered around others, but he found in Maura Simons the idea collaborator—a fellow student who, glimpsed from across the courtyard, caused him to take in his breath sharply, so surprising was her beauty. He met again her later that week, coming out of a class he was going into, and made a remark that elicited a brief laugh. Successive remarks on successive weeks established a familiarity that slowly rose to the level of friendship. Simons left campus in June for a job in the city. She works for an agency that manages water through allocation and distribution processes. She is currently dating a man ten years her senior who promises that his separation from his wife is tending irrevocably toward divorce. To her is due Dave’s ability to return to that first courtyard sighting, freeze the scene, name all the things suddenly flooding him, and realize in that moment that not only would he never stop feeling them but that in some sense he had always been feeling them. Those close to Dave call him “forever changed.”