Driving to the lake, I felt the deep freeze all the way down to my gut. There it stood, pitted like a moon. I drove in circles around the perimeter, eating French Fries at the rim of the world. All night last night there were people yelling on the street. I looked down and under the streetlight there was a boy-man like a young god hooting and curling his body round the post. Perhaps street corners are kinder to young men than stories, where they are always drowned, rent asunder by nymphs, dismembered by enemies; there’s always a river to carry them away. The lake is shut like a stained-glass window. Inside, another battered young man is suspended, but he’s beaming at me. Under the water, thick as blood, under the sodium streetlamp, the young men open their mouths—to sing, to caterwaul love, to check the silence before it can begin (before it can overwhelm).