In the passport photo, her expression is knotted as an uprooted tree. She is leaving everything for the man beside her. His face is wide open and he maneuvers the steering wheel like a magician. His arms embrace the future, while she drowns in the wake of kissed air and tearful goodbyes.

Suddenly she crumples their map and tosses it out the window.
─Why? her husband wonders.
─If we’re going to risk it all, why not navigate by the stars, she dares him.
─ It depends on whether there are any. And if we can see them.

Her people stood at the door waving long past the hour that should have had her turning back; and rushing into the house, convinced she left something precious there, something she would recognize if she ever saw it again.

Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest title is a series called Intricate Things in Their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Ilanot Review, Café Irreal, Pure Slush, Literary Yard, and New World Writing. A classical pianist, she lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.