At 5 A.M. the Amtrak lounge car was deserted except for Leo the attendant, who was wiping glasses and preparing for the day shift, and me, scribbling in my journal because I was too excited to sleep. I was moving across the country with a man I had fallen in love with only a few weeks before.
Leo noticed my notebook and asked, “You a writer?”
I said I was.
“You write poetry?”
He needed assistance writing a poem for his church newsletter: an acrostic tribute to a deacon in his church. As I helped him compose a few lines, he asked where I was going. I told him I was heading for Oregon with my “fiancé” — I didn’t feel quite right telling this churchgoing man that Fritz was my lover.
