But for a longer reach

She, with those brown eyes, rests in a small apartment in an Albuquerque complex. She's raising a kitten there. The kitten is her whole world right now. She's been sick lately and missing her Mom fifteen hundred miles away. New Mexico has risen to fourth on the list of states with the highest number of daily new cases.

One state over from there, someone has stolen the package I sent to raise the morale of a friend and her son for Christmas.

Further to the East, an old friend considers painting his Winnebago black and heading out into conspiracy fractured America. He will bring his telescope, guns and drones with him. I suggest psilocibin to add a spiritual dimension to the voyage. 

I find myself ready to embark. 

The morning begins with rain. The rain stops. The sun comes out. A wind rises and then settles. The sun sets. Others have bought up the black sunflower seeds my bird and squirrel and chipmunk friends now eat at a startling rate. Naps nip along the course of this abbreviation. Make coffee. Later a sandwich. Read and write e-mail. Initiate a phone call. Become complicit in a mutual misunderstanding. Do something gauche, regret it, and withdraw back into solitude.

I read about a man who writes about a land blighted by night, blinded by white, where the roads run on forever, and all of your well formed plans are transformed into steam and freeze upon the window glass. I can feel the buck and sway of the train car and the widening void of lost directions.