In twos the nuns walk to the bluff after matins, their shadows before them quick and tall. No matter which way you face, a sign of what’s behind. We’ll talk briefly, and later I’ll find a Bible in the hostel mailbox, inscribed: At the blessed grotto I have prayed for you. That road is likely paved now; what was then my life is now but half. It wasn’t for years that I’d pray for them, standing in a garden in San Salvador with a man named Obdulio, whose hands explained: Prayer isn’t a thing you do, it’s a place you leave, the breath of it still warm inside you.

At the construction site, a dashed white line on tarmac tells of wires overhead. A machine operator, looking down, is reminded of what is above, just as the botanist, dead pond before him, might see holes in the largest of fabrics. At the door to a hospital room, an old friend shakes her head, can’t bring herself to approach my grandfather. We watch him sleep with a sleepless face. He was such a good dancer, she says.

Don Pedro draws near a grackle that stands its ground atop an upturned wheelbarrow. Finders keepers, says the bird. Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to teach me all these years? I watch as man addresses bird. Last night I dreamt of a world without stillness, he says. And it was such a still world! So still, there was no word for go, no verbs, nor any hope for flight, for flight was all around us. At this, the bird wept.

Some days I’m an I, occasionally a you, but most days I’m a he.

Yes, a man explained to me, the kite is like the soul. The strings are long or short. Some, belonging to the prophets, seem endless. When the wind dies down, each returns to its home, and as we coil the string around our fingers, we vow never to let it stray so far again.

I want to tell you about my Grandma, how she taught me the difference between a slider and a curveball in her kitchen, fingers tight around a grapefruit, how if a player went down looking with a man on third she’d explain it’s because his wife is due to have twins any second!

At night, beetles come close, bless Don Pedro’s thighs, calves and shins. In his dreams, a lover unwraps her self from his, a little on the left, a little on the right, like tight apparel being worked off, making her way to the soles of his feet from which she falls through the floor and out of his dreams. What touches blesses. Don’t reach for it.

I did touch his hand. It was cold, a tortoise shell.

But later, walking home, I saw signs. Sprinklers on in the slight rain. The bus driver singing to himself. The joy of pausing in one’s steps.

You think you’re alone but upstairs a neighbour is watching through raised blinds. If you pick your nose, it’s for her. If you look up, you rehearse the most cautious form of prayer: Lord, don’t do anything, but be near. It could be her son started school today, or her marriage is ending, or both. What she sees in you is mostly a matter of shoes left behind like an echo of feet.