When Heavy Things Touch Ground By Daniel DiFranco

She came around the corner at a quarter past two. She was careful, scared. Then click, bang, quick they put seventeen tranquilizers into her, and she fell. When she hit, she hit hard, and things made of glass trembled.

In the paper, where her picture was plastered all feet and dusty gray mound, it was reported that she’d died of cardiac arrest on the flatbed back to the circus.

The next day a kid came home from school, and when his mother asked him what he had learned, he thought of the picture, left on his teacher’s desk, and the cracks in the ground. He thought of the elephant, and he thought of its feet and the weeds reaching up through the pavement. He didn’t want to lose it — to give it away — to talk about it before he understood it, so he said, “Nothing,” to his mother. He went to his room, lied down, and thumbed an old rock he’d plucked from a streambed long ago. Long before he knew of elephants or newspapers. Long before he knew what silence and weeds and feet the size of tombstones could do. Long before he could pretend and lie to his mother.

© 2015 Daniel DiFranco

Daniel DiFranco lives in Philadelphia. He graduated from Arcadia University with an MFA in Creative Writing. His words can be found in Smokelong Quarterly, LitroNY, Philadelphia Stories, The Molotov Cocktail, Wyvern Lit, and others. He can be found at danieldifranco.net and @danieldifranco

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