The night Sheila drove me across the desert between Regency Mall and the office park,
it was time that she told me her plans for the night and the way the stars shone out on the
hood.
We stopped to do firecrackers on the dunes.
And late at night we snuck upstairs to her room, and commenced Transmissions from the
Satellite Heart on the stereo and begged for our lives to start.
But they never did.
Not the way we thought.
Not the way we begged for, the way we prayed for.
And then, at her brother's graduation, we all gathered "˜round for a snack by the
punchbowl, and her teacher was in line.
And he looked down and he stoned her and scolded her life and then smiled and asked
forgiveness for his crime.
And Sheila read a page from her manuscript, and sold it to a publishing house that was
there in the back row.
And Sheila turned to me with a tear in her eye, and money rolling off of her cheek,
and said "I've gotta go, nmy son."
I said, "You're not the only one."
But I loved her.