He takes nothing which is how you know it was decided in the body before the mind knew, socks without shoes, the door left open like a sentence that stops mid-, the road accepts him without opinion, without warmth, the asphalt holding the day’s heat a little longer than the air, rising through the threadbare socks, nearly tender, behind him the house with its one lit window, its noise holding a shape by now, violent weather he was born into, quickly learning the smell and taste of your own blood, he is of six or seven or the age that is not yet old enough to be believed, the trees on either side lean in, enormous, their darkness a kind of shelter, the first he has been offered freely, somewhere a dog, somewhere the low complaint of a truck on a distant road, moving toward a place he cannot name but recognizes as safer than the home he left, the idea of away, the only geography he has, his breathing evens, this is the thing no one will tell him, the body forgives faster than the mind, already his is making adjustments, already his is carrying him elsewhere, the stars come out, ancient and indiscriminate, entirely without knowledge of him, yet he still looks up, the way the drowning always look up, the water growing, the light above, cold and very, very far.
