Disintegration
Karen Fischer On morning drives to New Orleans East, the rising sun became briefly hidden by I-10 as it climbed from highway into bridge. The grade was reminiscent of a roller coaster, the chugga chugga chugga only this far from memory. When I reached the apex of the highway-turned-bridge, the sun could finally show itself fully once again. The power of it, even in the early hours, was blinding. But relief came quickly as the road dipped towards the first exit from the bridge onto Downman Road. The transition was steep. It required vigilance. If I did not hold the brakes steady as the Celica careened downhill and onto this exit, the car could, in theory, spring out from below me, crash through the concrete barrier, dive over the bridge and into the Inner Harbor Navigational Canal. The lazy brown waters sifted below, ambivalent about who or what entered them. For two months I made this drive on the same days and hours of each week. Many of those days, I drove far beyond this point, across Bayou Sauvage and Lake Pontchartrain northbound to Slidell to drop off the man who would one day become my fiancé. From there, I’d turn and head West back to New Orleans East. A rural road led to a new job and when I maneuvered onto it for the first time, I was stunned by how severely the concrete was destroyed by potholes. Some of the jagged holes were so deep you could hide from the tips of fingers to beyond the wrist, halfway to the elbow, in them. The holes seemed geriatric, like missing teeth in an elder’s mouth. Tripping in one could break an ankle or slice