I came in fast over the hot flat black and there they all were, laid out in rows, the metal beasts, sleeping nose-in, not one of them moving. I lifted the receipt off the dashboard of one, spun it twice, set it down three cars over, and nobody chased me.
I took the smell of somebody's fries and gave it to a woman two rows away who lifted her head, wondering. That is all I do here. I move what they leave loose.
They lock the beasts. Did you know this? They walk away and turn back and press a small thing and the beasts blink and bark once, and only then can the human leave, satisfied that the still thing will stay still. I cannot lock anything. I have never kept a single thing I loved.
I lifted the hair off the back of a man's neck while he stood counting the rows, mouthing numbers, and for a breath he shut his eyes, and I thought: he is trying to remember where he set his beast down, in all this sameness, so he can come back to it.
Come back. They are always coming back to the same square of black. I flattened a paper cup against a tire, tugged a woman's coat, rolled a stray cart a little way and let it drift into the empty part where nobody parks, and then a door slammed somewhere behind me and I was already out over the fence, over the road, carrying the fry-smell and half a laugh and one dry leaf I did not mean to take, to set them down gently on someone who will never know where they came from.