She thought she woke up. Black willow shadows for walls of her room. Was it sleep? Or the star-dancer come for her dance? There are stars who have names, who are dreams. There are stars who have families who are music. She thought she woke up. Felt for skin, for alive and breathing blood rhythm. For clothes or an earring she forgot to take off. Could hear only the nerve at the center of the bone--the gallop of an elegant horse. She thought she woke up. Black willow shadows for walls she was younger then. Her grandmother's house sloped up from the Illinois River in Oklahoma. The house in summer motion of shadows breathed in cool wind before rain rocked her. Storms were always quick could take you in their violent hard rain and hail. Gritty shingles of the rool. Rat rat rat ratting and black willow branches twisting and moaning and she lay there, the child that she was in the dark in the motion. She thought she woke up. Joey had her cornered. Leaned her up against the wall of her room, in black willow shadows his breath was shallow and muscled and she couldn't move and she had no voice no name and she could only wait until it was over--like violent summer storms that she had been terrified of. She thought she woke up. Maybe there were some rhythms that weren't music; some signified small and horrible deaths within her--and she rode them like horses into star patterns of the northern hemisphere, and into the west.