At a rest stop in the desert I walk among the parked cars late at night, blanketed bodies sleeping on the slope of the hood with a rolled jacket for a pillow, as if home in the familiar weight of their beds. Some lie on their backs, uncovered, mouths open to the darkness, hands holding on to nothing. How is it that these finite, fragile bodies hover here, safe and dreaming, lost? They'll never know me, how long I looked at them, envied them. They're expected, waited for, loved. Someone has asked them to pull over and sleep, leaving me with the endless dilation of sand—no distance in which to grow small. Even the curve of day, if it comes, will bring no birds to sing the hours, or rain to use as passage between the earth and sky. If I could dream I'd see these sleepers rise to circle me, their faces my horizon, the boundary of their hands pressing me closed, their voices saying, Here, you end here. Christine Stewart was the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry and the Modern Poetry Association in 1998. She received an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poems have appeared in Five Points, Maize, Ploughshares and Poetry. She lives in Baltimore.