you don’t remember the errand he’s running, but dadleft the headlights on when he entered the stranger’s house,                  leaving you to watch the air thicken with mayflies so thinyou could suck one up your nose and never know. pairs                  bend into shapes your spine pities. tails curve to snappingand lock. antenna to antenna, they crane each other into a ring.                  light breaks from the porch — dad’s halfway to the car whena woman follows him out, the silk tie flashing in her small hands                  unmistakably your father’s shade of red. he doesn’t look at heras she drapes it over his shoulders like a priest’s uneven stole.                  he can’t keep walking — she has him by the neck now. she wrapsthe ends around each other in a pattern that sears itself to memory:                  around, behind, over, through, pull it together, a squeeze, a kiss.he enters the car, says nothing. in one motion,                  he dismisses her and turns the ignition. everything’s still butthe thumps of an engine trying its best, the tranquil crunch                  of gravel, the wind ripple across her white bathrobe.at the end of the driveway, his palm presses the steering wheel                  into circles. the dusty road barrels through millions of cornstalkstwisted like cigarette butts into the earth. he cups his hand loosely                  over the wheel and watch: the wedding band rolls easy against it,orbiting his ring finger as the car rights itself. he wants you to                  pay attention to this: these circlets spin like smooth gears, lockedonly by the finger that pushes one on the other, locked only by                  the friction. he needs you to understand the physics of this. see,if these gears were made for each other, given matching teeth,                  they’d bite. got it? if the cog’s fit for only one match, it’s halfway useless.what you’ll need to do is sand yourself down, stop thinking                  the other half, start thinking an other half. the key is eagernessto adapt. let everything turn around you and push                  just hard enough to keep spinning. any harder and you’re stuck.mom and dad push as hard as they need to. they don’t push here.                  errant mayflies slap to the steady windshield,sounding like rain, some in contorted couples, all twitching,                  and they are quickly pinned under the insistent wipersand burst.