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Peter Periwinkle
“Peter Periwinkle had a car accident,”
my brother said,
as if reading it aloud
from the back
of a cereal box.
It took me three full seconds
to realize
he meant our father.
We were on my grandma’s farm
where she had recently died,
leaving chickens scratching
unknowingly in the dust.
Our father was elsewhere—
broken, back bent like a paperclip,
drunk at the wheel
when the other car found him.
“Peter Periwinkle had a car accident.”
He'd meant it to be snide.
A small, spiny cartoon creature—
ridiculous, expendable—
the punchline in a story
where no one comes to help.
I didn’t laugh.
I just pictured a blue hedgehog
lying still at the edge
of some forgotten road.
I hear it now
in a different voice—
quieter, without the sneer.
Peter Periwinkle,
still small and lost,
still limping along the shoulder
of some long-forgotten highway.
I don’t excuse my brother
for laughing when he said it,
but he may have seen something
I was too young to name.
Copyright ©
Roxanne Andorfer
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