More on: escape

I. The TAXI DRIVER stopped and gestured to the empty desert. “There.” I saw nothing. “Where?” “There.” Now I saw, or thought I saw, some irregularity in the distance, about a mile away—the reflection of standing water, or maybe the attenuated shadow of a dip in the ground. After I paid the man, he sped…

Tweaked out on her mother’s meth, the twelve-year-old walks the county roads of my childhood, sees stars in a sky crow-feather black, finds the pack of wild dogs, the teeth of the mottled Lab less frightening than her uncle and his bristle-brush whiskers. There’s little left to do here but grow long and mean, to…

Even at escape velocity, we move so slowly, and having escaped, we walk, run if it suits the moment, always return to walk, a chair, a bed. So slowly, whether on a park trail or a space station treadmill or from the room having kissed a child goodnight. We cannot outpace the sun or moon,…