Pilgrim

She invents wilderness out of absence, erases houses, the husband, the sewer pipe and the suburb it empties. Leaving the sparrow, the snake. Daily walks in her Virginia suburb minus the curb. Biographers struggle to account for these years in the wilderness, the housewife off hiking. Maybe her Virginia should be a West Virginia: wilder, less money, the creek a holler not this empty cul-de-sac. Some days she erased all but the air, maybe the light. Husband of the space bar, carpool a clean section break. She became a man in the wilderness and won the Pulitzer. I told the truth, she said, only I left some out. What rises in such a clearing? What stays home checking and re-checking the egg.