Maybe I’m still working from a place of collective composition toward a singular voice, trying to derive one true chord from that old cacophony. The steel strings went slack—too much tension over too much time.

And, yes, even now, even for me, there is joy in seeing the rainbow flag in public, in one of the last places I expected to see it. There is joy in not quite knowing why it’s there, but knowing that it means something to the person who chose it.

“The desert tests the faith of even the most committed. When I received orders to deploy here, I imagined sand dunes and shimmering heat.”

“A duck’s disappearance figures in history’s rising action only obliquely. A mass death that only enlivens a larger dramatic structure. It is setting; it is not scene.”

“In hindsight, I see the event as strange, a random act of violence from which no lesson can be drawn.”

“This is the Delta, where you can look and look but find no visible demarcation line between the salt waters and the fresh waters.”