I take his hand to examine 
the nature of the swell. 
See any blood? He’s thinking 
in another language now, shakes 
his head and whispers No.

Eyes fastened to a faint horizon 
above the city spilled from its grid, 
his thumb jerks like a hitch-hiker 
over a splay of geography.

A map of foothills opens in his palm.
Split by rivers jagged as those straddling
his epic, he grits his teeth, sets his jaw, 
braces every muscle and nerve.

Staring down a starburst of backtrack 
highways, other routes of escape taunt him; 
sky-splitting mountains, the ocean’s silt floor. 

I lift his hand of longitude and latitude, 
bring it to my lips. I remind him that
Bees build in the crevices. I cannot leave 
his wound alone.