a luminous crack across the dashboard window

splits the tender sky and I watch light like a smooth

river stone, gray light that forgets, graveyard light

that washes his hands, baptizing them in my memory,

and still, the wheel turns

we travel through prophets towns, bloody heaps

of fur on the roads between, and strangers’ clothes

lines create horizons in every field, while

crosses, marked by dried bouquets,

crease the land with grief

when it begins to rain, I hope the

flowers bloom again, and again

we wonder who lives in those

eyeless sheds.

the rhythm of windshield wipers

lifts me, like a tide, between sleeping and waking,

and I am dreaming of being wet in fields,

my bones scratched with long grass

while I eat mustard flowers,

bitter and gold between my teeth.

“We’re almost there,” he says when

the sun finds a trapdoor

and I believe him.