Facts scatter before me like debris from an airplane I must reassemble 
in order to divine a port of origin—

                            Item: coyotes have made their way south into the city. 
                            Item: my son’s clothes have become a size too small.

I am thinking of the spaces between us all and how we fill them, 
this song of love we call economy, moving cautiously to work

to home to shopping in our city of weekend visitors.

                     Item: woman sets fire to house while destroying bedbugs.
                     Item: my phone is pulsing on the table.

By the time news of the high court’s ruling is handed down
and screens citywide begin to flare with commentary and statistics, 

I am crying on a couch, surrounded by the only photos I still have 

of a friend I’ve learned I’ll never see again—
curtains of distance, curtains of narrative obscuring 

anything that might explain his sudden absence. 

                            Still, the hours send us on our errands: I dial a distracted
                            phone call here and poke the stray elevator there. 

The local soliloquies by bus stop, pastry counter, and linen factory 
ramble on unwritten, my glass slips from the counter, the wildfire 

                            and flood roll on, the austerity, the estrangement—
                            Ours is a love as American as a shutoff notice.