She split work on a Friday to see the Aurora Borealis

Drove north to no place in particular other than north, into weather with the bite of autumn’s first apple

Near the Canadian border, she sat on the hood as the sky turned a green shower curtain with occasional flashes of God’s naked body

The drive home was all hurricane news and the new Tool album, and that internal banter one has when they’re worthy of love and alone nevertheless

The thoughts that keep one up or pretending to sleep, or while wheeling a cart through a supermarket, or sorting images in photoshop

There’s no Aurora Borealis in stray cat land tonight, but the planet is alien, and it takes forever for the casher to recognize someone they’ve seen hundreds of times, and make a mild joke of recognition, and I’m not even as gone as I will be

Better to go ever North ‘til you’re facing South and like Stuart Little have a sense that Margot is somehow ahead of you and you’re in the right direction, then to go West and West and West and never see anything other than your own tail-lights