No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
We’d just started our second week of basic training at Fort Benning when they flicked on the TV and we watched the plane go into the skyscraper. It was silky-smooth, the way the building swallowed the jetliner, and I remember thinking it was pretty good for a movie special effect. Yeah, I thought I was pretty smart, the real badass of the platoon, but as it turned out, I didn’t know jack shit.
The dog runs into traffic, its tail tucked under its body, its whimpering audible even from where my wife and I stand across the road—even with all those cars slamming on their breaks to avoid hitting the animal. We’re 30 minutes southeast of Houston, on the Farm-to-Market Road where our new home—an apartment complex—is located. Living here feels like living on a highway: There’s nothing worth walking to and every drive—even just to the Target down the road—takes forever.