Of course, there are cows. These roads drip a bovine cologne: you smell ‘em before you see ‘em. It is spring again and everything out is coming
in—ants tread a path across poem drafts; Mama holds a bucket with a baby mouse; a pillbug moseys their way along the basement floor. Also called a roly poly, this one curls their body up and inward,
like you, asleep, turn from me so we are spine to spine—pancrustacean consecration. I often lie awake in the weight of your absence and tender myself holy—how solitude feels so precious next to a lover, and how coming,
quick and heavy beside you, is ritual, like driving on another Virginia highway and someone screaming cows!! the moment we see those dark shapes dotting the landscape, like moles on a collarbone.