These Sentences, These Penances

East, with what passes for wings. Mist rises off the turnpike, especially in the middle of the state where forest is still abundant. Distance is a comfort because it reminds us somehow of time. Washing the rice, soaking the rice, steaming the rice, and later eating the rice with salty eggplant and homebrew teriyaki. Hints of the sea are never not abundant: scrub pine on 495 South, texts about an extra room on the Cape, shells on family graves (distributed when we buried Dad). The guy mowing pauses but you wave him on: this is going to take a while. Thank Christ for thought or else the mechanics - of grief, of sex, of writing non-discrimination policies - would be too damn terrifying. Ordering a bagel and iced coffee for the drive home, fingering a smooth nautilus, Avalanche a not-unwelcome ear worm. The lie is an invention of the truth, so that the truth can expand its understanding? Or are we subject to dominion by that which is not yet - and may never be - entirely known? I was comforted by a crow that circled the cemetery, choked up when Chrisoula called as I was re-entering west-bound traffic. What matters and what doesn't matter doesn't actually matter, and yet. There are these sentences, these penances. There is this woman saying I'm home.