by Meg Thompson

If I am ever in a car accident, I tell my husband, it will be during fall migration, driving east on State Route 18, right before where the road dips and you are able to see the whole marsh. If not there, check the dairy farm on the corner of 303 and West where I like to pull over and watch the tundra swans forage in the fields for bean stubble. Or, maybe just off the train tracks that cut through my parents’ farm where I swear I saw a pair of blue-winged teals but my dad thinks they were wood ducks. And while it’s possible, but not likely, I might be in the Target parking lot, the one on the border between Amherst and Lorain, because I once saw a bufflehead land across the street in a man-made lake while I ate Taco Bell in my car, though that might have been a dream. If you still cannot find me, then I am already gone, a girl again, 1987, watching the ducks in a low river off I-71 at a rest stop outside of Ashland. My mother is in the background, telling me to hurry up. Get in the car. You can’t stay here forever.