We pass the Big Sky Diner packed with customers and curlicues of coffee steam. We pass a massive plaster cow perched above a party store. We pass an American flag obliterating the landscape, then an ice cream shop. I want to wonder with you what the cow means. But you are not a morning person and I love you. We pass a billboard saying if weed had been legalized in 2014, we could’ve saved a billion in Medicaid. The billboard does not mention the prisons we could’ve emptied or never filled, the lives left to their own glory. The morning grows heavier. We pass the moment and many cars pass us. We pass a red dog on the side of the freeway. We pass the dead red dog as traffic slows to the pace of unexpected grief. Your hand reaches to cover my eyes. In the darkness behind your fingers, I mourn you, driving, unable to look away. All day I dwell on the soft mound of the body. The going. The coming home.

MARIE SWEETMAN is a writer and editor in southeast Michigan. She is a volunteer fiction reader for Ploughshares and has studied creative writing at the University of Michigan and publishing at Emerson College.