Maybe it's all in the stopping.
     I think I'm going to find that that's what it most is,
     like finally letting die a run so that the rain just falls on you, unbattled.
How quickly things change.
     Whomever sees me opens their eyes wider, and
     lets me know that I'm now very, very wet.
I'm insistent, damning.  There was nothing to do but stop, can't you see?


It is all in the stopping.
     Stopping is the loud bus, dead pictures on its side and gears
     and exhaust packaged in an unassuming rectangle
     on a too-hot long afternoon, bound for Diridion, it says.
A single hand will reach up to pull the cord at the rim of the window,
     announcing for everyone an inevitable intention: STOP REQUESTED.  Then
     one by one or in twos, off,
     back into the world from the hot bus.
And no one wonders
     where the others are headed.  Look purposeful.


Stopping is touching all the carpets
     and the television, the unearthed bobby pins,
     owned and borrowed, and putting everything somewhere else,
     announcing "I'm leaving."
Stopping is moving.
     It is letting fly the gears and unrelenting pistons,
     letting in something next,
     being watched as you do not disappear seamlessly
     but with the car keys and the thermos on the sticky vinyl car seat waiting
     or the sandy shift of your shoe on concrete backward.

It is like your breath over and over --
     reminding you of what you do not do,
     reminding you that you are by yourself haunted.