The Prize-winning Essay

June we go to the homestead in Montana

and the winds rock the house and if I close my eyes sometimes at night

I think there is no house and the wind comes over my face

just as it goes through the tooth-shaped leaves of the sagebrush

or the fur on the face of a wolf

and sometimes there in the dark I think we will never find our way back home

my body feels separate, something not mine

.