$ _

The factory's steam towers breathe their white into the clouds and I fear a child will think this the origin of all weather. The sky is empty, otherwise. It's Indiana, flat and poor. January. No sun, no crickets. In my car I tally the cigarettes I've seen today in their skittery dance on the expressway. Unsung ballet. Two fingers hang from a window in their particular posture of holding. Then, the letting go. Rehearsal of the disposal of trouble. The towers surrender their slow shapes. I know how clouds are made, roughly. Water is dismantled. Vapor is the taste of bubblegum or banana floating through a sunroof at a stop light. It's Indiana, then the river, flat and brown, then Kentucky. No fireflies, no money. Crushed styrofoam Polar Pop cup in every periphery. I breathe into the cold my own small clouds. What the factory makes, I don't know. Vapor is water, undone. I fear some sudden beauty will undo me. What then will I become? Above the new Costco, skeins of geese float across the sky. Inside, on the on-sale flatscreen display, more sky.