The Ark: Self-Portrait as Aphrodite Using Her Dress for a Sail, ii.

Early morning. Still dark. I am in a taxi. The most elegant ‘ti Creole in the world is on the radio. I catch a sliver and think how one tiny word can be sacred—an artifact—the only green thing that returns inside the beak.

okra

We stop at a toll. It is just a toll—a toll like any toll—but I am thinking, We are all the children of migrants, none of us come from here. And I wonder if the toll-taker ever imagined that one day it would be this black mask in the back seat, or that red mask on the driver.

The toll-taker smiles. I smile. We all smile. It is nine degrees outside. For a moment I am underwater and can’t remember which city I am in. Not Boston, but London, Dublin maybe. Or maybe cities no longer exist. Maybe they are all beginning to shrink away, plane by plane, brick by brick. A woman lying dead on her couch for three years watching television.

And then, perhaps because I am suddenly unsure of which town I am in, or which town I will be in by evening, the thought to pass through my mind next is, And just what is so wrong with being destroyed?