Noon was a girl with a buttery heart. Melting in the heat and making a mess. I named my dog after Noon. A hound with a leap so high at apogee--he threatened to dash out the moon some nights. He took a swipe at the July sun but it was scorching and his one ounce of good sense held him back for a time. Not so for his namesake and her cube of heart. She was risk’s golden daughter and beauty’s creamy find. She was glistening and bright matter. Like any shine-monger, she was arc and heat, she was hunger sliding on its own melting, she was tallow and sheen and she was snuffed out.

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Yes, Ms. Noon is your very own first-time high-step girl to have and to hold. She's appeared nowhere else except a dark karaoke lounge in Demopolis with a boy called Highway who hissed windily in her left ear and once, only once, in a tabloid photo with a red M & M placed in her bellybutton and a czar or two beside. Ms. Noon lives in the wingtip of a holding pattern of gulls where she can point the way like a safari tour-guide to the geometric giraffes and the whooshy owls. She reads thediagram thediagram every chance she gets. Inspired, she spirographs the riverwaters until they eddy and keep every pennywish she tosses them. Noon happened like this. In a moment congealed by July in the deep south, where the greasy spoons all fill with the weary starving, the overheated. Up from the asphalt and hot tar always in the future tense—shaky with the water ropes—like licorice but glassier—for the thirsty.