The blizzard drove them home. Now the thirteenth century, now the choir sang. If he kissed her without intent, without touching, believe it, they sang in Latin. The car glides like an egg through the centuries falling around it, but the voices merge, singing. Stone gates, cobblestone.
Salt streaks the car and a mule deer waits for the lights to stop blinding.
But what they are singing is not about love. It's about wanting the story, driving all night and waiting for someone to say, that man or, this woman is mine. When the racoons came to the kitchen window, which was open and through which they stole 2 new loaves of bread, we wanted to open it again and give up our cantaloupe, bananas, the last green apple in the blue ceramic bowl. The creek runs in the moonlight like a narrow escape. On the rocks the coons had sat and washed the bread, each bit of crust torn off and dipped in the water, turned till every pore soaked through and the sopping bread was clean enough to fill their mouths like fish, like bread washed clean of our hands.