Waiting for the stoplight, I looked down at my hand, resting there on the stick shift, and for a second I thought I was holding the lever that would open a gaping hole in the side of a mountain, a passageway to a secret cavern where creatures who no longer knew whether they were living or dead, human or animal, captive or free, bathed in the still quiet waters of an underground lake, and for that second I wanted nothing more than to open that mountain and join those creatures, maybe the desire came first and the image second, I don't know, but the intensity of my desire didn't matter because I could I could see that my hand was too weak, too arthritic, too skeletal to move the immense weight of that vast and rusted lever. I lifted my eyes and looked back at the road. The light had changed, and the car in front of me had started to move, so I shifted into first and gently let out the clutch.
