THINGS HAD GONE BACK TO BEING WHAT THEY WERE. a couple rocking across the television, the scratch of the needle on a worn-out record—if I were trying to get to Tuskegee, what exit would I take? another accident flagged on the shoulder, a line of cool-eyed Madonnas at the roadside market, had I left a little lipstick on the pillow, we had left a surgical silence, a tear in the vertical.—warm me up

instead with your guesses, dumb suggestions, the truth loops itself out of eyeshot a million miles below the interstate. the years. go and go—before I could say what was real and what had gone galloping through my dreams . . . I did get to where I was going next, I stood on a roof half-dressed watching a jet wake stretch itself into the most insane blue you’ll ever in sunlight see.