Deliberate

Cradled by two hills,

at the intersection of Highway 59

and the Trail of Tears

we are forced to choose

between carne asada with beans

and tacos gringos.

A second, more obvious choice, is a warm orange soda or cloudy water.

The town is quiet, having emptied at 11 am, my 9 year old interlocutor and server tells me.

Trade Day woke up at 3 am, stretched and laid down its rails of commerce, ridden by vendors, gawkers, and hustlers.

All admire and peddle local veggies and crates of chickens, some of which “fell off a truck.”

Now, at 3 pm, the last wares, the pit and pith of the market are a basket of shriveled habanero peppers.

I buy them all.

The gloaming ushers me down main street, under the new eyes of the Cricket Theater, whose mouth has long been boarded.

Leaving town I make a wide angle with that other vector, one of sorrow

whose fingerprints still mark Collinsville.