Tonight in the taxi I picked up two women at Bellevue just after their friend died in an accident. He was skateboarding and hitched a ride on the passenger side of a garbage truck and lost his balance when the truck changed lanes. He was crushed by the rear tires.

There were no heroes and no monsters, and there was silence. They loved him, and they wanted something else, and they wanted cigarettes.

I imagined some vibrations, the outlines of bones—dark things—the way the song moves. The last kind words I could think of were take care, but they were inadequate, and the shadows kicked over the wind’s cathedral.