We needed my grandma’s blessing. That’s why we went over there earlier than usual, and it’s a good thing we did, because we wouldn’t have made it any longer than we did. Heading over there was the best thing that could have happened to us. The tacos, like I said, and my grandma, she can put a smile on Musette’s face. Musette is my wife. My wife is Musette. My grandma’s memory crapped out with that massive turd that was stuck in her butt. She kept calling the baby a boy. It’s probably because we had her in a blue shirt. We had picked out a more floral one, but she’d peed all over it when I was putting her pants on.

My mom kept saying her name, her full name, middle and all, both feminine unless you shorten the first name to the nickname that Musette had originally wanted, the consolation, the nickname of our dog, baby Carlo, baby boy, that’s what I call my dog, Carl, that’s what I call him, but my baby is a girl, baby Carla.

Carla is a girl, my mom says once we’re out in the parking lot.

They get in their car, and we get in ours, and then we follow them part of the way back to the house until my dad pulls into the left lane with his right turn signal blinking.

He makes fun of me for following him so closely. We are so close to home. It’s just that leaving the old folks home confuses me. I’ve ended up on an unfinished and unlit highway that didn’t allow u-turns, taking me far North before abandoning me on a railroad track to await a train led T-boning.

They’ve got somewhere that they’ve got to be: a viewing, but they don’t go to that. Life is more important than death. They’re trying to get chicken food, or fertilizer, but the feed shop is closed on Sundays even though the bookstore is now open from 12-5.

They’ve got three older chickens that they’re getting rid of to make way for the younger chickens that they recently got.

The older chickens aren’t letting the younger chickens lay their eggs in the coop. My parents are finding eggs all over the yard. The eggs from the younger chickens are a lot smaller than the ones from the older chickens. Some of them are blue. I’ve been eating eggs every morning. Two for breakfast. Between buttered toast when Musette makes them for me. Always with Tabasco. Cheese if we have some.

I’m wanting the protein. I want to be lean, but it doesn’t matter because I am lean. This body it’s just a hub, a router, physical eyeballs, a brain for the imagining of streets on top of streets, cigarettes that don’t kill, a gun holstered beneath my jacket, clearance to varying layers of the mystery, and a partner who gave us a child, but who is not Penelope, Penelope existing somewhere out there in the world, but who is she? And who is my wife?