Tonight, I wish I knew who to blame, the crooked nuthatch responsible for the eggs I can see strewn even through sky from over hillside. Shattered before their time, now spilled sunny-side up, with innards beaten and assailed to the open air. Where, like a pact, each curbs their own messy shine before meeting eye to stormy eye.

I’m unaccustomed to it all. This unspoken honor system (or was it embarrassment all along?). I’ve never seen a people so wary to count their chickens before they hatch.

In the daytime, I still don’t know where I am, but am flooded by the fact that I have to see it. Where honesty with heft enough to knock the wind from any stray body is convection (sorry, convention), stowed near the bullets in every back pocket.

But what a good thing it is, to have a friend at the other end: muted in her gleaming, but gleaming just enough.

At least these lights are good for something.