Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

cropped and filtered for public consumption. Everyone putting on the “show of me.” It was when people were alone, unobserved, that the mask came off.

But mainly, people were so wrapped up in their own inner hurricane that they never saw anything outside the storm of themselves.

World crumbling, still making lists. Life went on.

From the highway every place looked more or less the same until they got to Texas, where things got dusty and flat.

Then the southwest exploded in bold clay reds, and towering browns and evergreen. Diners got kitschy and full of themselves. Big cerulean-blue sky, towering cumulous clouds. And a night filled with so many stars it didn’t seem real. The painted desert at sunset. Low adobe structures surrounded by scrub and silence.

people went back to their lives. They had to. Because the ugly truth was that some things—even people—got lost