The morning calm, sun dripping over the edge of the roof next door, pearly sunlight between the edges of shingles, butted together like repelling magnets, forced apart by the heat of a thousand mornings like this one. The dog wandered back and forth across the sidewalk, nose to the earth, tail to the sky, searching for the path of her most recent relative, who also searched for a precursor’s path, till the timeline stretched back to wolves and coyotes howling outside the light of campfires and smoldering kills. Her ears popped up and she settled on the spot and released her morning’s urgency into the grass, while I stood and watched the road, the neighborhood, the morning, sunlight.

A car passed and then another, until it became a procession of makes and models, every color of Detroit’s rainbow flowing, bumper to bumper traffic in the neighborhood. One horn went off and set off a symphony of blaring, tinny horns, accompanied with a shaking fist and a screamed obscenity. The procession slowed its pace, as they cars bottlenecked at the stop sign, which only increased the volume until my ears could no longer process the sound, a humming feedback. I looked down at the dog, her squatting down, looking up at me, a tiny speck of sleep cradled in the corner of her eye, ears up. She stood, shook herself and led the way back towards the door.

The sound ceased.

Work would be later in the day, so I sprawled across the couch, cradling the dog, sleepy and dozing on and off, a constant eclipsing of consciousness like a view through a spinning fan blade. I slept.