(We left Manhattan a little before 10pm, heading west.)

¶ Progress through the dark scrub of upstate Maryland at midnight. Breadcrumb streetlights stretch in to the haze and glob amoebalike at the horizon.

¶ Dewslick parking lots section out the black below lonely neon signs, their edges curved, colors bleeding in the mist.

¶ Blowjob stories to a tambourine solo.

¶ The boney hedge of treetops along the highway is backed by a deep maroon. There’s a film-grain grit to the air above Baltimore.

¶ The bent trunk of a concrete overpass crosses itself like a bow; is made strange and sculptural by its particular balance of scale and symmetry.

¶ An empty frame waiting for its highway sign: skeletal scaffolding jutting up like organ pipes.

¶ Baltimore was leveled in the blast. Solemn columns of glowing globe lights - street signs swinging in the wind. That pale yellow pallor of an empty city at night. Two bags dance through the intersection and pirouette for a quiet moment above a sewer cap. Corner bars are closing - hands in pockets, collars pulled up. The last are turning in.

¶ DC: fortified and wet. We didn’t linger.

¶ 5:32am.