Greyhound

She lingers by my side with her midnight smile, trying to get me to laugh, grin, show a little humanity, a little life amidst the static slumping figures waiting endlessly for that call, for that dry voice on the intercom to tell them to move--we wade through a sweaty fog towards a tarnished transport, an uncomfortable destiny--the seats disappear, gobbled up by a bongo drummer and a young couple with two young children and a pair of wannabe gangsters calling their parents from their cellular telephones, telling them that they'll be home soon, and we're already cramped in our seats as we pull out into the brown night--hurtling over the infinite pavement, I think that we started right over there on the road that slices across the provinces, through tiny towns, open prairies, never coming back to that secret beginning--dreamy lights floating through celestial darkness flow like a river of broken constellations--the driver tells us, from the darkness, that we're broke-down, stuck for a while in the desolate gray morning, asks if there's anyone who's mechanically inclined, if there are any men, and I do my best to fall asleep as the men file off into the night, as she squeezes my hand, as the baby wakes up, babbles incoherently.