Secret outfit

what the girls didn't know was the boys didn't care what they wore. what the boys didn't know was the girls didn't wear it for them. I sometimes replay that scene, those small flat roofed houses with the hard brown lawns, decorated with bikes laid down like bowling pins dropped in haste, plastic flamingos for art, an errant unpruned boxwood, two cars rest in the driveway. it's always hot outside. the stories I make up. the husbands inside watch the game. the wife was pretty once. the children are not as loud as most. we drive to leave, to cleanse and rinse and forget, to be better in the next city, we drive to bring with us what we believe is our version of something unknown, to find it in that other place. it's not in these yards with one tree and the short rough grass. inside the airport is cool. the new Holland firm did the design. it is modern and sleek and it holds the future for everyone coming and going. this is a place where you cannot stay. ticketed passengers only. this future is a shadow, something familiar, vaguely, you've watched it on TV maybe. but no one stays at the airport. only passing through. the guards outside blow whistles to hurry the cars along. New Delhi, if you haven't been there, its mazes of streets like circuit board patterns cannot be understood in a thousand lifetimes. you move on. it doesn't care. the people are shadows. outside the small town in Texas. the Dakotas. the sun drops. the moon comes up. the shadows mark the last trees.