The week of future tense
will gain momentum midway
through longer journeys
along trails with spurs.

It will bring stronger winds
and trees shedding
their warmer colors.
There will be night sweats.

She will acknowledge
the colder rain outside
with a cool gray voice inside.
She will use her words

to promote a stranger’s
single-line diagram
as the secret map
that will guide us to exit

this broken rhythm—
vowells to be discarded
along the breakdown lane.