The brown sedan in front on the road
is going too slowly, is stopping and starting
and stopping again, which leads your husband
to say what he often likes to say at times
like these: If you’re lost, pull over—
meaning stop, take stock, reorient yourself
on the map. But the moving blue dot only behaves
like you, weaving uncertainly from side street
to highway then back to the rest stop where you’ll
reconfigure this part of the itinerary, backtrack
to the last point before you got distracted,
before you took the wrong exit and suddenly you
were on a bridge and the sign said, implausibly:
in 15 miles, New Jersey. And so it is with other
parts of whatever journey— You moped
for months in your rooms, wringing your hands
at the unchanging landscape of closets,
at the unexciting light you thought poured
day after day the way milk weakens the cup
of strong black tea. And you may have wanted
a change, may have wondered how some people
get to go about their business like actors
on a stage, dressed so wonderfully for the part;
like a singer about to deliver the throaty wound
that changes forever the placid atmosphere
floating as backdrop to the moment. But the moon
shone through the window as the man came up
the driveway and fumbled for his keys
on the doorstep— its silvered light fell too,
as if orchestrated by an illusionist’s assistant,
on an arrangement of pictures in the vestibule: one,
where a boy observes red carp leap through arteries
of streets; and another, where a girl on a green hill twirls
and twirls her bright hula hoop without worry, in place.
In response to Via Negativa: Tenement.