Down the empty avenue traffic lights trip in random contradiction, nulling all possibility of timely progress. Used cars wait upon their lots through the night like illuminated units of currency.
Signs beneath crosswires at regular intervals advise 32 mph, implication being any other rate impedes flow. Yet practice shows travel of precisely 32 mph also forces a complete halt at every intersection.
Even the traveler with nowhere particular to go gets there eventually.
All that you can no longer remember is still there. Each street you've been on, every kindness shown you.
In the dead hours of the night the avenue runs straight and deserted for blocks upon blocks to an unseen black river and there, at the end, rises its dim drawbridge conclusion.
