You are nothing but roads interrupted by wheels *

There are moments around 2 am (or 4 or 1 or 3) when memory is vacant. You wake only to darkness and quiet and listen to the steady breath of the man next to you. You thank the darkness for his sleep as memory surfaces. There should be heartache, but the heart is full of ash; ash has no feeling. Instead, my feet and ankles ache as though the heart has actually fallen as far as it can and still be contained in the body, and there, equally distributed, pain lives. Outside the darkness is alive. In the shadows, a fox questions what has been left out that the raccoon passed up, perhaps she has followed the path of the squirrels that have been in and out of the yard all afternoon. Above her, the leaves are like butterflies that have become lost in this dark time. I don’t want to be the fox or the night or the wayward stars. I want to be those leaves, especially the ones low enough to graze tall creatures that venture here. Let me touch the doe as she snacks on clover or jumps with her sisters through the dew-covered dawn. Let me witness the fox her nose reading the night. Let me imagine the house asleep and whole.