Fri*nd / B**k / Alp*ab*t

His eyes caught the passing of a bus, orange and broken white, and in a passing moment he left the stage. His hands described a guitar, eyes a bus.

She holds to herself a weed, pulled from the grass. Will you? she says. The weed asks her skin a question he couldn't have fixed.

In certain houses the lights were doubled, late city. She wouldn't have been there—the paling sidewalk—except for the voice: daughter? daughter? She folded her hands, nearly folded.

His glasses are televisions of her, even as he watches his hand. Go home? he asks, but she's already there.

Wait, she said. She was surprised how easily the knife passed through the apple, dull knife, red apple. Wait, she said. The sun pierced the door, family in the drive.

An ant began from the linoleum, crawled past her elbow, shoulder, to the clouded ceiling. She stirred her pot, focused on a dark fog. The ant reached the bulb, vaporous and warm.

When he parks the car, he will not get out. The motor will fall away, snow on the windshield. He'll sleep, then and inside, all the hearts on the block neatly typing.

He is clear, it'll be that metal, no other. It is like a dog: blue, heavy, patient. He pays, and the man at the register—what is it?, his eyes silver filling.

She turns away, one black heal, curled ends of her hair. Her smile is fixed—screwed, small. But then the sun declining, orange and cool, her palms find his eyes.

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