In which I’m the girl that the young man can only tell the truth to while she’s sleeping, the one in Simon and Garfunkel’s “America.” And a few years later riding a Greyhound bus with a quiet kitten in my backpack, at the toll plaza one sign pointing to Philadelphia and one to Pittsburgh.

And before that “Rock of Ages” and “The Old Rugged Cross” in the usual pew. And I used to pretend to be asleep hearing my mother sing, if that mockingbird won’t sing, mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring, early like that. With a light patting on my back. And later smoking childishly right by a no smoking sign in the waiting area, was it Pittsburgh? And before that the monks singing in their monasteries for God. Minstrels passing along their lore about familial birds and lime-green snakes, saints and room-like trees. Did it bear fruit? Could we eat it?

And the dapper man telling me what I ought to do, as if he could see my life stretching out in a gray arc, inevitably patterned, he has my young man’s eyes. But perhaps a much bigger heart. Not my type. And I am sleeping not pretending to, when he alights.