From east to west, a common story unfolds,

Anna

I pull up to her house and hit my hands against the wheel

In the grainy black and white photograph, Mengistu Haile-Mariam stands above the world on a narrow metal platform, high enough that the sky has become his backdrop.

Victory has arrived, to the streets,

The Fixer sat on a rusted swing set and watched the sky.

A man falls through a blue September sky, with his body perfectly vertical, with no blood in the frame, no fire touching his shoes, no scream coming from his mouth

Like a lingering bruise, I feel you.

Before anyone touched the moon, before the flag waved in gray dust, and long before the world paused when hearing “The Eagle has landed,” there was a woman in a small fluorescent-lit office surrounded by paper.