Somewhere around mile marker 43, my heart and the road finally meet. Slow, numb tears fall, expelling breath in relief, sticking to my cheeks, pooling at the cleft in my collarbone.

I look at the clouds. They float softly alongside me, great and quiet companions of grief thrown in high relief by the setting sun we leave behind us. They gather rain but don’t know how to release it.

And it is no particular thing; today is not an anniversary, nor a first, nor a last.

It is everything and nothing all the same. It is the world, which unfurls, vaults and slowly spreads itself to the thin horizon of a flat Wisconsin plain, wheat waving in the dry heat. Another day is ending.

[Photo.]