I went to a stranger's funeral—a man named Marv. He fought in Vietnam, in the air force, like my grandfather did. His family loved him. I don't know how he died, but his pastor said, at the end, Marv wanted his suffering to stop. He left this place on his 86th birthday.

There is a feeling that surrounds the landscape here—a kind of churning, like the stuff of the living and the stuff of the dead are being stirred by some silent hand. The street is cracked, and the white walls of the house are tracked by vines. The people live dignified lives, and at night, a hundred red lights blink across the sky above the dried stocks and paper leaves of an endless corn field. 

After Marv's death I began looking for boundaries like these—places wherein life and afterlife wear thin.