Her 2001 taxes go into the shredder. Frozen walnuts hit the trash, then some old panties, that free clipboard, stained mugs. Everything she’ll never use is jetsam now.

Aldi builds speed as she goes; she’s learning the rhythm of rejection, how to set its acceleration. That jacket. This book. Those markers.

Bag after bag she empties out the old apartment, thinking of scramjets. They have such frantic names. Get one going fast enough and all it needs is air to sustain the burn, and that’s what she wants–that deep urgent glory within her, escape velocity, a skywise blaze away west.