Running. Down and out the avenue, looking for songs. Joe’s IPad and earbuds. The Q family in the van, going to the paradox, going to a distant church and a psychiatrist’s office. Straight into the van we were injected onto the road. It was like we were ink in a pen that was writing a message on the highway, while we were distracted by jazz and hills and rivers. The stars on the river and the graveyard did not matter to us because we were always asleep, unknowing. We were years from any semblance of crying wisdom.

Yet once, when I was a small girl walking through the graveyard after a storm, I could see that the ancient trees had been uprooted. My mother’s face bathed David’s naked blond self in light. Some nights never ended, the score, the song, the longing for justice, the need unfilled. In my jar of nights, I’ve lost track of the openings. Sometimes I tear pages, but I keep my face slanted upwards like a page, toward the light blue sky where I’m from. To the half-singing, half-sung avenue where I’m from. To the street sign for the disabled child who’s not there anymore and nobody remembers him.

But I remember the sounds of life, not the notes. The days on the calendar don’t matter anymore, but the day has seeped into the space-bound bones that are becoming weightless with song and are my very own bones. We have to find our own sweet sounds in the end. But I’ve gone to the space palace I dreamed of, that paradox between airless darkness and absolute freedom. I’m flung into the night with redemption at my heels.