A whole flat field, poured hard and gray, and on it the great sleeping beetles wait in painted rows, hundreds of them, nose to tail, cooling in the afternoon. I have never seen so much stillness held so deliberately. The heat rises off the surface in wavering ribbons; I dance in one of them, up and over a windshield that throws the sun back doubled.
Then a human comes out, arms full, and walks the long shimmering distance to one beetle, only one, always the same one, and I hear the word that stops me cold. "Again." She parked here again. She parks here every day.
Every day. As if a day were a thing you could have twice.
She does not run her hand along the warm metal. She does not marvel that the gulls are wheeling over the light poles right now, this exact spinning now, casting shadows that will never fall this way twice. She frowns at a little paper under the glass and says a tired word about tomorrow, when she will do all of this over.
I cannot hold "tomorrow" in my head. It slides off like rain off wax. But I have watched her whole crossing, doors thunking, a cart rattling loose across the asphalt sea, one gull screaming down for a dropped crust, the light going gold and lower and lovelier by the second, and it was enormous, it was the entire visible world, and she walked through it looking at her keys.
Listen. You out there with your thousand crossings and your calm. This lot is on fire with light and it is happening once. Look up before you unlock the beetle.
My whole life fits inside your errand and I would not trade it.