L is for Laloo, darkness in a dress. Her body is very vulnerable tonight, there in the forest next to the highway. Only children on road trips notice her and wave. In her red dress, she is like a girl in a fairytale, geographically. (All the branches behind her have begun to stir.) This is what a girl does in stories: she walks slowly, almost meditatively, along the perimeter of a forest and then she veers. Are there forests in London? Yes. Are there forests in the ocean? Yes. Are there forests in New Jersey and Nebraska? Yes. She finds each forest in turn and enters it as a test of desire. It is radical desire but, unable to stop feeling what she came there to feel, she can't stop and now she is in the thick part of the country stumbling over the roots. This is walking—technically, no longer hitchhiking but something else. An intensive travel. Is this a forest or is it just a stand of pines next to the highway? Is it re-growth? Is it a tree or trees? Yes. A red girl goes into this yes and is never seen again, which will break the hearts of her parents when they receive the shoe. It is always a shoe on the asphalt, recovered from the scene then wrapped in paper and placed in a ziploc bag. Is this a scene? L is for Laloo kicking off her shoes and breathing deeply from her toes to her head, allaying her deep fear of the gathering dark. Is it dark yet? Yes. Quite dark. I can't see her anymore—just a shiver, moving through the trees. Something is coming towards her in the moment of contact that precedes alteration, something huge, but I can't see what it is. The question of home dissolves into the question of trees. L is for love which is blood: the gathering speed of a pulse though the person is standing very still in the space before touch there in the darkness which is real.