There’s tar at the edge of the new asphalt road; Cold in winter, soft and sticky in the summer sun There’s nothing like a paved road/ I guess it takes a gravel, dusty, dirt-filled one to know the difference. When I walk along my mental tar-edged road, it’s December: dark, lights bubbling in the window evergreen, me longing for a way to comprehend my aching ribcage, frantic bloody cuticles. Did I eat that other box of cookies, and what will I do for the money? Dig into the old purse, the cushions fed by drunken, snoring, singing, whining, biting, sniping parties? How I dreamed of fixing everything. I new I could! (Throat aching, fingers hurting, luminescent cookies in the closet corner.) I’ll wake up willing, armed and ready: mending broken pieces, gluing back the days of childhood. Visiting the slant-roofed farmhouse, grass high, hollow tree, full of whiskey. Dinner at the table with the extra piece of plywood, how I dreamed of home, carsick, staring at the fading countr...