and all its straight-razor backroads planted with plasterfarmhouses bowing to January’s muddy expansecould make me sleepfor nothing here resembles the sea—not a pebble of blue on this quiet pathback to Michigan where just past Kentuckya plastic bag puffing in the trees fools me for a hawkbefore I switch my phone to video chatfor a friend’s empty funeral that movesin its own careful pattern in an equally small towndozens of highways beyond my car, my bindlesanctuary, which is not unlike the rooms we allmust inhabit where the hymns being spoken (not sung)are dropping out of earshot. I maintain hope, though,some friends may gather to play accordion in the springfor the still heart of the half body now jigglingin my screen’s corner over the road’s pits and stones,and thus, I am gone in the way I would beif I were in that dim parlor— thinkingof Election Tuesday at the grocery store instead.I’d just nervously voted for a livable futureand there on the produce-aisle floorbetween the bananas and crisp lettucea stranger was dying. I saw his bright belly convulseand charge like a rollercoaster until his spine flattenedand I shied away into a wall of bread to imaginewhat it would be like to fade under all that fluorescence—the store clerk wielding a mop to paint water around your tremors,a few paramedics, and a handful of women clutchinggrocery lists like rosaries as if they too might turn awayor look intently on as your body shakes up toward God.