When he went through the windshield, amid the shrill fracture of glass and above the curling guardrail, he did not think of Junebug or his mother or his boyhood summers at Lake Tenkiller. He thought only of deep-grooved ritual: get in, turn the key, press power on the radio, turn the air to 1, and buckle in.

He saw the guardrail. He saw the guardrail and knew, or half-knew, what would come next.

He headed straight for it, going sixty, sixty-five.

He used to play a game to break up the monotony of interstate travel, back when he worked the night shift at Wolverine. He'd close his eyes for as long as he could while driving. He began with five seconds then ten, no peeking, eventually making it an entire minute, speeding down I-44 alongside the eighteen-wheelers and the farming crowd. It was around 5 a.m., sure, but a minute still.

Before he cut the ignition he turned off the air and the radio, always. His dad told him it made it easier on a vehicle when you started it. A mechanic later told him that wasn't true. Not even remotely. He still did it.

He saw the guardrail and thought of it in the same realm as driving blind, a game of chicken ending inevitably in forfeit although victory and loss weren't clearly defined, only the edge tangible, the heart rate going mad, the blood rushing through the tributaries of the body.

He thought brake. He even said it out loud, alone in the car. The air was on 1. The radio was on NPR, some story about "hacking" your closet. He saw the guardrail. His foot pressed down on the gas harder. He wondered what it'd be like to fly over the edge then he was flying over the edge.

He glided above the first snag of rocks, small cuts on his cheeks burning against gravity's drag. The car did not. While the engine continued to hum, pieces fell around him, shards of glass and jagged bits of the valance and bumper. The radio played Muzak. They were between segments.

He turned the air to 1. He hit the power button on the radio. Why didn't he buckle the seatbelt?

His screams came out in long monotonal bursts, automatic and not quite human. Turn the ignition, power button, turn **** to 1, click.

He didn't think about what he'd hit first, tree or rock. There was still some fifty feet to fall before that decision was made for him. He didn't wonder if the car would land on top of him. He got in. He turned the key. Radio on. Air to 1. Then he clicked, didn't he?

Marie didn't call tonight. Marie. Her shape started to form in his mind, waiting for him on the couch in that stupid shawl, her face lit, a bright blue, by the glow of the television screen.

A tree, he hit a tree first.

The rough bark tore at his face, chest and arm. He could feel the tree bend then repel him. He took a branch to the rib and continued his fall to the stony earth. He hit the ground and kept falling.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

On a flybuzz afternoon in late June, the unshaven man in corduroy everything ashes into a shoe beside the bed. He takes another drag. He half hums, half sings "Fight this Generation." Outside he hears a car alarm. He looks through the blinds. Not his. An unopened letter rests on the night stand. He looks at it and then doesn't. His phone rings for the ninth or tenth time. He picks it up and throws it at the wall. Pieces with names like RF amplifier, microprocessor, and flash memory chip divide and shower onto the hardwood floor.

An hour and half a pack of cigarettes pass. She fiddles with her key in the door.  A few failed turns then she walks into the living room, into the bedroom.

She looks at the broken phone.

"At least I told you," she says.

"I didn't read it."

"I don't care. I already told you. That was just to soften the blow, a nice thing."

"Look for the splinters. You might see where they come out."

"We already talked about this. You said you wanted to stay together. You know and I know this wasn't completely my fault."

"Yeah."

"Yeah? Yeah. Absolutely. You've got to take care of yourself. I said nice things in the letter."

"I'm not going to read the letter."

She opens the window by the bed to vent the smoke. There's another siren in the distance. Someone protected, someone hunted.

"Your life is selected," he says.

"So select yours, too."

He runs his fingers through his hair, pushing the matted mess out of his eyes.

"For you to have the life you want, I give up the one I want."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. We've already talked about this. We've already had this fight."

"I want to have it again."

"Why?"

"I just need to."

"You're saying the same things."

"Maybe in a general sense, but I feel like I'm saying them better."

"I'm not going to listen to you refine your arguments for the rest of my life. We already got past this."

"Already is a strange word."

She turns her back to him and heads into the living room. "Everything is strange when you think too much, when you refine," she says through the wall.

"It's something that happened before or something that came too soon yet sounds like something inclusive, all ready to fight, to die. It's strange."

"You're not ready," she says. "I'm going to stay at Amy's again tonight."

She doesn't slam the front door. She eases it closed, locks it, and leaves.

"All ready," he says to himself. "All ready."

three day rain, odd to
see the flooded plains
in place of prairie choked
and lit; brightening night.
chilled wind stirs humid
days, sun foresought.
forced to sleep a
few days more.  and:
'i never see the
devil, but i do
see demons.'
stated as people walk the
spring streets covered to
cease rain from drenching.
refusing natural occurence.

a thigh gap
a peering spine
a cat eye
a cerulean highlighter
all of this and more
all of this, yours
21 mind-blowing *** tricks
5 ways to convince your doc you've ADHD
all of this and more
hack your closet
hack your pantry
your cellar door
all of this, yours
an e-thank you note
Facebook status remorse
an it's complicated
all of this and more
self-checkout
automatic hand dryer
automatic towel dispenser
automatic doors
all of this, yours
ask Siri where to bury the body
ask Jeeves where to buy the Molly
Google "the triumph of death"
and salute it with Bacardi
all of this
all of this
42 celebrities who used to have braces
8 Instagram hotties we love
42 gin recipes sure to inspire envy
all of this and more
how to love yourself
how to be a gentleman
how to make sure you marry the one
all of this yours
******* that read Angel Off Duty
boxers that read Reporting for Duty
ride the escalator all the way to
Jesus's heaven
fist bump Little Richard
and that kid from Malcolm in the Middle
watch St. Peter wave all the **** sorority girls
who've recently died in drunk driving accidents
to the front of the line
breathe, in from the nose out from the nose,
pick up a copy of Men's Health and read
an article titled
69 ways to incorporate gravy into the bedroom TONIGHT
all of this and more
all of this, yours

The young novelist wrote in his rented room, a claustrophobic nook under the stairwell, where the ceiling sobbed dust each time the owner hurried down to work or hurried up for a forgotten prescription. Shelves crammed with the owner's yearbooks and photo albums lined the walls. He typed at a long oak desk. On which, he had one plant, a gardenia, white flowers in full bloom, and a quote by Buddha on an index card in a four-by-six-inch frame. "You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."

The sun had quit for the day. He got up and poured out his cold coffee in the bathroom sink across the hall. He dried the mug with a paper towel. Then to the kitchen, where he pressed the button on the box of Merlot, filling the recycled mug. The denouement was coming together. But he hadn't hit his stride, tapped into that secret space where words flow with natural rhythm and proper grace. His hungry or starving or emaciated mother character--he struggled with the diction, the balance between subtlety and a Coca-Cola slinger's criminal word abuse--would decide to eat her baby. Not the ******, the denouement. Critics would **** as only critics could.

He drank one cup of wine while standing in the kitchen then refilled and stepped back into his room. The plant and the Buddha quote were suggestions by his mom. She didn't like him spending so much time alone. Time alone killed her uncle. The young novelist argued it was an indiscriminate heart attack. No, his mother said, it's from all that cheese he would eat. Cheese, his mother contended, was the unitary measure of loneliness, killing you one comforting slice at a time.

Google the symbolism, his mother said of the gardenia.

Secret love.

Oh good.

That's just the first result.

I always loved them.

That was only the first. I bet they're part of the funerary tradition.

Your father used to get them once a year for Pastor Mike. Do you remember that? Around Christmas time. It was your father's way of saying we appreciate your work.

Secret love.

The quote made just about as much sense. A devout--dare he think staunch--Methodist since she was old enough to disagree and berate, his mother's selection of a Buddha aphorism begged suspicion. The young novelist assumed this was an appeal to his academic worldview, a panoramic ideology that protected him from having to value or defend anything, really. Buddhism is **** electronic dance music; Methodism is vaudeville, tired and exploitative. And if his mother was trying to be cool, that disgusted him. But if his mother was trying to meet him halfway, that excited him.

That's it, he thought, the mug now half-empty. The mother is not hungry, not starving, nor emaciated. It's a loving mother. A mother that knows the lows of living. She eats her young in an act of compromise, to protect, to prevent confusion and isolation, hell even Kraft Singles.

He sat and scooted up his chair. He wrote in a fever, a frenetic fictive dream, page by page, scene by scene through the night.

I.

Up the stairs Suzann without an E went.
8" X 10" bright white rectangles dotted
the yellowing and dusty walls,
clean reminders of bad family photos.
Her parents, Bob and Theresa,
had picked out wallpaper. Lilacs
and vines and oranges. Why? She
didn't know.

She tossed her backpack on the floor
at the foot of her bed. Her senior book
was still on the night stand. Charity and
Faith, her sometimes friends, had spent
the last two weeks filling out every page
of theirs, printing hazy images on cheap
photo paper at their homes and sliding them
into the plastic holders or taping them to
the pages without.

They coerced boys they
had liked or still liked or would like if to
fill out pages. When the boys simply signed
their names or names and football numbers,
they guilted them into writing more. Give
me something to remember you by.

Suzann liked to look at only one boy,
Casey Stephen Fuchs, pronounced "Fox,"
though you know that's just what the family
said. She didn't want him to write in her
senior book. She enjoyed the space between
them. She knew what her peers didn't:
she was seventeen.
She knew she didn't know
the right words yet. She knew the heart-bursting
flutters she felt were temporary--enjoy them, she thought,
shut up and enjoy them.

Her parents set her curfew at 10:30. So
this Friday, like most Fridays, she stays
home.

She opens ****** in the City of Mystics,
a novel she's burned through. Fifty pages
or so left. She likes detectives. The methodical
stalking, the idiosyncratic theories and philosophies
that allow them to connect dot after dot.

She shuts her eyes and sends herself walking down
the streets of New York, where hot dog vendors
whistle and say, "Nice legs." She flags down a cab.
She sees Casey across the street. What are you doing
here, stranger? She waves the cab on.
The driver, a brown-skinned man from some vague
country, throws his arms up. "C'mon."

She cuts across the traffic, dodging a white stretch limo,
a black Hummer, a hearse.

Casey's straight hair hangs over his left eye. It's both
melodramatic and troubled. There's a small shift
at the corners of his lips, the corners of lips, this
is a detail she writes of often in her journal--why?

She can almost hear Casey ask her, "What brings you here?"

"Business."

"What kind?"

"None of yours."

He takes this as an entry for a kiss. Not yet, handsome. No no.

"Make whatever you want for dinner," her mom shouts up the stairs.
"There's stuff for nachos if you want nachos. Some luncheon meat too.
Only one piece of bread though."

"Okay."

"Alright. Just whenever. Dad and I are going to go ahead."

"Okay."

"Alright."

Get me out of here. Suzann's whole life is small: small town,
small family, small church, all packed with small brained, short-sighted people. She wants New York or Chicago. She wants a badge--no not a badge. She'll be a vigilante. "You're not a cop," they'll tell her.

"Thank God," she'll say. "If I were a cop then there'd be nobody protecting these streets."

II.

She's read mysteries set in the middle of nowhere, small towns like her own Kiev, Missouri. They always feel phony. Not enough churches.
Not enough bored dads hitting on cheerleaders.
No curses. Every small town has a curse. Kiev's?
Every year someone in the senior class dies.

As far back as anyone she knew could remember
anyways. Drunk driving, falling asleep at the wheel,
texting while driving, all that crap is what was usually
blamed.

This smelly boy named Todd Louden moved out of Kiev
in the fall semester of his senior year a couple years ago.
Suzann was a freshman.

A few months after he was gone, people started saying
he'd killed himself with a shotgun. First United Methodist
added his family to the prayer list. They had a little service out
by this free-standing wall by the library where he used
to play wall ball during lunch. People cried. Suzann didn't know
anyone that hung out with him. Maybe that's why
they cried, unreconcilable guilt--that's what her dad
said.

Then in the spring Todd moved back. The cross planted
by the wall with his name confused him.
He'd just been staying with his grandma. Nothing crazy.
The churches never said anything about that. He was
just the smelly kid again. Well until late-April when
he got ran over by a drunk or texting driver.
They hadn't even pulled up the cross by the wall ball site
yet.

III.

You call it the middle of nowhere, a place where the roads didn't have proper names until a couple years back, roads now marked with green signs and white numbers like 3500 and 1250, numbers the state mandated so the ambulances can find your dying ***--well if the signs haven't been rendered unreadable by .22 rounds.

The roads used to be known only to locals. They'd give them names like the Jogline or Wilzetta or Lake Road, reserved knowledge for the sake of identifying outsiders. But that day is fading.

What makes nowhere somewhere? What grants space a name?

The dangerous element. The drifter that hops a fence, carrying a shotgun in a tote bag. Violence gave us O.K. Corral. Violence gave us Waco. Historians get nostalgic for those last breaths of innocence. The quiet. The storm. The dead quiet.

IV.

It's March and not a single senior has died.
So when she hears the front door open
around 2 a.m., Suzann isn't surprised.
She doesn't think it's ego that's made
her believe it'd be her to die--but it is.

She hears the fridge door open.
Cabinets open.
Cabinets close.
She hears ice drop into
the glass. Liquid poured.

She clicks her tongue in
her dry mouth. She puts
a hand to her chest. Her
heart beats slow.
She rests her head on
the pillow. It's heavy
yet empty, yet full--
not of thoughts.

She can't remember the name
of any shooting victims.
She remembers the shooters.
Jared Lee Loughner, Seung-Hui Cho,
James Eagan Holmes, Adam Lanza.
No victims.

She hears the intruder set the glass on the counter.
He doesn't walk into the living room.
He starts up the stairs. His steps are
soft, deliberate. What does he want?
Her death. She knows this. He is only a vehicle.
Nameless until. Has he done this before?
Fast or slow?

He's just outside her room, and she doesn't
remember a single victim's name. She hears
a bag unzip. She hears a click.

If he shoots her, Suzann Dunken, there's
no way the newspaper will get her name
right. Her name may or may not scroll
across CNN's marquee for a day or two.
If it does, it won't be spelled correctly.
This makes her move. Wrapping
her comforter around her body, she
tip-toes to the wall next to her door.

She hears a doorknob turn.
It's not hers.

He's going into her parents' bedroom.
They're both heavy sleepers.
She opens her own door slowly.
She steps into the hall. She sees the man.
The man does not see her.
She see the man and grabs a family
portrait. The man does not see her,
and he creeps closer to her parents.
She sees the man standing then she
sees the man falling after she strikes him
with the corner of the family portrait.
The man sees her as he scrambles to get
his bearing. She strikes him, again with
the corner. This time she connects with his eye.
A light comes on. "Suzann," her mother says.
He tries to aim the gun. Again she strikes.
He screams. He reaches for his eyes with
his left hand. Now with the broad side she
swings. She connects. She connects again.
The man shoves her off, stumbles to his feet.
By this time, her dad reaches her side.
One strong push and the man crashes into
the wall outside the room, putting a hole
in the drywall.

He recovers and retreats down the stairs
and out the door into blackness.

Her mother phones the police.
She pants more than speaks
into the receiver.

"Suzann," her dad says. "Sweetheart."

Suzann looks at the portrait, taken at JC Penny when
she was in the sixth grade. The glass is cracked.
She removes the back. She pulls out the photo.

"Did you get a good look at him?"

This photo. Her mother let her do anything
she wanted to her hair before they took it.
So she, of course, dyed it purple.

"That's right," her mother says.
"It's about half a mile east of the
3500 and 1250 intersection. Uh-huh."

Her dad sits down next to her.

"How long do you think it'll take them
to find us?"

There's a shift at the corners of her mouth,
and she nods, just nods.