No coyote

    ++Dude, what you looking at?

    I was holding a lantern, pointing it towards the scarce canopy through the little hill and the college dorms yonder.

    --You see that window over there? It was my room. I was about to get lost in there.

    ++So what?

    --There was a night dark and with many odors sweat and beer and bare feet, and it was bright the moon had never been that close to the earth in 9 years! I was so about to lose myself that night. I reckon drinking Mezcal is like chewing a handful of this brown earth down here, it dries and itches all over your mouth just the same.

    ++That's you looking at?

    --Yeah, also. I saw a shadow. At that time I was driven back and forth from Tesuque sitting in the back. The car headlights would run fast reflecting here and there. They trick me. Made me think there were coyotes. I would be quiet most of the time just peering into the shadow, into the lights.

    **Do you fear the moment we stop talking to you? If we get lost in a forest what is there in the darkness?

    I smiled at that one, but no one could see my face.

    --Then I drove all the way to El Paso. I keep repeating to myself I saw a dead coyote by the road. It was worn out. The road I mean. By the sun. Like one of those horse skulls in the cowboy movies, just like that. A white bone under the sun half buried in the desert connecting Santa Fe and El Paso. Some unfortunate busted wheels at its sides, ripped open like rubber skins.

    **Do you think I'm gonna read that?

    ++You ever wanted to be a woman, squeeze a lemon between your legs? Ain't helping you aiming at the sky. Not even if there were snow up there. If the universe is expanding there is a limits equivalent to a black holes, you learned that this summer. Now, bend over, easy, drop that lamp, open up, easy. Chew some earth, that help me a lot.

    --Now it ain't no sun, no more of that psychedelic warmth. I get to drive my own car, back and forth to Tesuque. It rains now, so the deceptive reflections on the road run faster as I sweep my lights over some dirty puddle. They run as scared animals or as scared coyotes. But they aren't, and thus I decided there are no coyote. They don't exist. Coyote is the pitiful light we shed on the road.

    ++That's right chew more sand. Thank the rain, dude, it's wetter this way.