Who am I to say that the hawk circling above the deck wasn’t really the murdered sister of our host, as she insisted? Who says the dead stay dead, or even human—for all I know our souls stream out and leap into the nearest form, manzanita, termite, light pole, to begin the challenges of figuring out when to break into blossom, how to find a mate or glow softly each evening without a single glass of wine. Our host was downing grape juice and growing wild-eyed about the government, unable to stop reliving the day her sister died on the Kent State Commons when the Guardsmen turned in unison and fired on the students. She was right about politics and false narratives but wrong about the winged creatures swarming from the eaves as we talked. Those weren’t moths but they were sort of lovely until we realized they were busy eating her guest house on the California coast, in the pleasant weather we were enjoying thanks to the drought, grateful that smoke from the wildfires had drifted elsewhere. As she kept on I felt sympathy leak out of me until all I could think of was how to get away, to be alone with my lover and forget about my country’s many crimes, one of which was killing a college girl. Who, why not, might have been coasting the thermals all day looking to survive by killing something else. Who am I to say a word. It’s not my story. My love and I excused ourselves and went inside to make dinner. In the nearby cove the breaking waves endlessly bashed themselves against the rocks.