I once got lost driving home after a midnight Christmas service— fog thick on the two-lane road that wound up Lookout Mountain, a slick snake tongue slithering through birch and pine.
The trees twinkled silver from houses just beyond— and the moon hung low in the tree line, distorting the clouds and stars, emanating an eerie, unholy light.
Shadows—maybe mailboxes— stenciled in white fluorescents: Surnames and house numbers, the only thing that almost knew me
But mostly I was lost and did not know where I was, or what the next curve might hold.
No stop signs to pause and think or turn around.
All the turn-ins, locked and shut.
A place I had no memory of passing through.
I waited for the fog to lift, for the light to come— not from the moon, but a porch lamp flickering on in one of the big houses.
A woman saw me crying in the car and came down the drive without asking my name.
She led me to a barn painted blue, no bigger than a manger, where I could rest until morning and remember how to go home.
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