Prostration had become impossible. I needed a less-demanding god, one I could repair at home with duct tape, a little pine tar, or a well-placed screw. Someone had begun making sandals out of antique plastic Coke bottles, & down at the cafe the kids had learned how to draw a crowd with their impressions of the dialogue in telenovelas, which were the only thing still being broadcast. No one had seen a terrorist in years. I took in a small income in bets, dissassembling & reassembling my rifle in under a minute — nothing wrong with my fingers! The last time the execution bus came through, we all felt a little sorry for it, still on the road at an age when most buses are getting ready for retirement at the edge of some meadow full of goldenrod. The MP driver asked the crowd if we had any volunteers, & I caught my hand twitching in my lap. That’s when I decided I needed some new fire to raise me from my wheelchair, once & for all. Faith is more than what you believe; it’s how you see, & I was seeing too many shades of bruise. It’s what you hear — that murmuration — when you sit in the middle of a crater on a clear night & wait for the artificial stars to inch across the sky, infallible as scalpels. I realized my infrared goggles still work, & sometimes even the heat-seeking missile in my pants. I’m a self-made man.