It’s only six
thirty, but
night is already
heavy, thick,
black, dense.
We hurtle along
ink-dark twisted
roads, lined with
tall, promising,
never-lit
streetlights and feathery
bending pines. A young
man emerges suddenly,
out of spreading
darkness,
walking -
it’s always men
walking at night - he
wears somber
clothes, and walks
near the edge
of the broken, rising
pavement,
unaware. He is
illuminated
in a brief flash
by the angry head
lights of an
oncoming car,
then he disappears,
consumed by the
night. The only trace
he leaves is
the faint
incandescence from
his palm-cradled
phone.