Sandy was a boy I knew from the factory.

"Hello" from a sun-spotted face and then nothing else.

Nothing but his sunken eyes sometimes meeting mine and a mouth

that smiled and stayed shut.

For months he might as well

have been a painting, his

brown hair blending with the grays around us.

Head still, arms ticking like two metronomes.

Same sandwich every lunch break.

He was so silent he could dissolve into the air. So silent that I wondered if he was real. What evidence there was that he existed.

He spoke to me again

On a sunny Wednesday,

through the stiff air the fans pushed around our bodies. He said that bodies melt ice quickly.

There would be no evidence

if someone was stabbed by a sharp

point of ice and

We went back to working.

He was gone the next day.