Pass

Black slope silhouette
of bare winter hill
dusk-punctuated
with a single bright star
layered in azure
that fades to fuchsia.
One cloud under-sided by sunset
is near dark on the nearside, backlit.
A lone light on that hill
means no score or men
or money here.
We must push through
or turn back south
as she's still sick,
but I'm a month now clean.
Her uneasy head
heavy on my arm
rouses, eventually speaks
and asks the name of this town.


I eat the sandwich
parked not far off the road.
She cooks the last forty
and ties-off for the new darkness.
I cap her needle and fold the kit
as she slips into a long night
where I must endure
to carry us to somewhere new.
The sky's reds go indigo then black.
She nods again
before we've even gone a mile.
Lives half-destroyed
we travel into each other's debt.