I watch through my third-floor hotel window, drawn to a woman, her back as stiff as the lampposts lining the circular drive, her shoulders set, her black trench coat accented with a striking poinsettia-red woolen hat, maybe Merino wool. She stands curbside, one hand resting on her rollerbag. I watch as the shuttle for O’Hare arrives in a splash of snow and ice, the woman’s reaction a second too late. As she wheels around, I see the slack of her cheeks gray as the salted slush sliding down her coat, and I note something about her as familiar. Sleet waterfalls down, and she raises her face to the pelting sky, and I imagine her saying to God or whoever else she thought ruled her world, “Really? What more? What fucking more?” And, in response, the more is a blast of wind rolling off Lake Michigan and down the alley of the Chicago River and lifting her beautiful hat off her head, and I watch as her shoulders seize. Last spring, post-treatment, with my energy returning, I went for a run along the lake and the same relentless wind ripped off the ball cap I thought I’d cinched tight to my slick head. Now, down below, I watch as another woman emerges from the hotel’s entrance and rushes forward with an umbrella, and the shuttle driver races over with his apology in hand—and the woman’s red hat, waterlogged from the puddle in which it landed. Recovered.
Kim Steutermann Rogers lives in Hawaii. Her chapbook Denatured: Stories of Change will publish in June 2025 from ELJ Editions. Her writing has published recently in Moon City Review, Ghost Parachute, Gooseberry Pie Lit Magazine, and elsewhere.
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