the sudden flickerings of hand to mouth and expulsions of breath that fill the car with smoke as his mind fights what will happen when we get there. Worry Dolls I laugh at your funny hairband with its crude, bright thread-dolls tacked to a coarse, purple ribbon. ‘You tell each doll one worry at night and it helps—a little,’ you explain, laughing back. It seems to me a talisman that must come from your Costa Rican life, invested with some jungle peoples’ folklore for healing, but dates, you say, from a day of ‘retail therapy’ at a shopping mall near Rancocas Valley Hospital. Trust you to transcend the banal with the potent and magical. We wore each other out with sleep deprivation this visit, playing worry dolls until that dead time when it is quiet even on West Holly Avenue, - and it helped. And now you are back in Shy Town asking why visits have to mean a week of tired, and I am still here in limbo between worlds smiling at the bit of magic you take with you, and leave behind; and I remember us laughing, with some unease in our amazement, at my story of the old woman in her Sunday coat who spoke my thoughts out loud that day under the ‘L’ when I too inhabited the strange world you live in now: ‘I don’t like State Street.’ ‘I just don’t like State Street.’ Too much voodoo on State Street.’ I think of you there, a bird of paradise in a high-rise cage, cycling on your mountain bike after dark among demons of the city, and I send you some magic in return—some good voodoo vibes to balance the odds, to make you smile,

DOI link for the sudden flickerings of hand to mouth and expulsions of breath that fill the car with smoke as his mind fights what will happen when we get there. Worry Dolls I laugh at your funny hairband with its crude, bright thread-dolls tacked to a coarse, purple ribbon. ‘You tell each doll one worry at night and it helps—a little,’ you explain, laughing back. It seems to me a talisman that must come from your Costa Rican life, invested with some jungle peoples’ folklore for healing, but dates, you say, from a day of ‘retail therapy’ at a shopping mall near Rancocas Valley Hospital. Trust you to transcend the banal with the potent and magical. We wore each other out with sleep deprivation this visit, playing worry dolls until that dead time when it is quiet even on West Holly Avenue, - and it helped. And now you are back in Shy Town asking why visits have to mean a week of tired, and I am still here in limbo between worlds smiling at the bit of magic you take with you, and leave behind; and I remember us laughing, with some unease in our amazement, at my story of the old woman in her Sunday coat who spoke my thoughts out loud that day under the ‘L’ when I too inhabited the strange world you live in now: ‘I don’t like State Street.’ ‘I just don’t like State Street.’ Too much voodoo on State Street.’ I think of you there, a bird of paradise in a high-rise cage, cycling on your mountain bike after dark among demons of the city, and I send you some magic in return—some good voodoo vibes to balance the odds, to make you smile,

the sudden flickerings of hand to mouth and expulsions of breath that fill the car with smoke as his mind fights what will happen when we get there. Worry Dolls I laugh at your funny hairband with its crude, bright thread-dolls tacked to a coarse, purple ribbon. ‘You tell each doll one worry at night and it helps—a little,’ you explain, laughing back. It seems to me a talisman that must come from your Costa Rican life, invested with some jungle peoples’ folklore for healing, but dates, you say, from a day of ‘retail therapy’ at a shopping mall near Rancocas Valley Hospital. Trust you to transcend the banal with the potent and magical. We wore each other out with sleep deprivation this visit, playing worry dolls until that dead time when it is quiet even on West Holly Avenue, - and it helped. And now you are back in Shy Town asking why visits have to mean a week of tired, and I am still here in limbo between worlds smiling at the bit of magic you take with you, and leave behind; and I remember us laughing, with some unease in our amazement, at my story of the old woman in her Sunday coat who spoke my thoughts out loud that day under the ‘L’ when I too inhabited the strange world you live in now: ‘I don’t like State Street.’ ‘I just don’t like State Street.’ Too much voodoo on State Street.’ I think of you there, a bird of paradise in a high-rise cage, cycling on your mountain bike after dark among demons of the city, and I send you some magic in return—some good voodoo vibes to balance the odds, to make you smile,