How Trinity Site Was The-Last-of-Days-Angel And Could Not Find Those Who Needed Him Most

All leaves fell in one night. Then, voices, far off. Trinity Site looked over his shoulder, through a net of bare branches, could not find the source.

He understood beauty, the symmetry of fire sweeping dust down a black street. But still, he could not find those he was sworn to protect. He disappeared inside the ring waking off a dropped stone in a still lake, found a rusted can, a tire, thought: “This time. They’re close.”

Sage and blackbrush. He stalked a naked figure pasted with dollar bills walking a desert rail line all night, but it was nothing, led nowhere: Prickly pear and broken glass; wadded toilet paper where someone had once squatted between the ties; a red-striped caterpillar crawling across lightning charred bark.