At the side of the freeway
trembling, staring at his shoes,
the truck driver tells
the police officer his story,
a story about having to deliver
500 gallons of paint from El Paso
to Phoenix, how even though the lock
always slipped apart, nothing had ever
fallen out the back, how he didn’t even know
it was possible for a paint can
traveling at 70 miles per hour
to crash through a windshield,
hit somebody in the head
and only knock him unconscious
for a few minutes, how he was sorry
about the unsightly mess of lime green
but how lime green beats blood red any day.
Later, light-years above the freeway
chuckling, doubling over,
a space alien will tell
a few buddies his story,
a story about traveling far to assume
the form of a human between El Paso
and Phoenix, how he collided
with a car, briefly transforming
from solid to liquid, how he didn’t even know
it was possible for a hyper-intelligent being
traveling faster than the speed of light
to infiltrate the human race so shoddily,
have to pretend to be a miraculously saved man
and answer the questions of a fool in blue
for a few minutes, how he erased the memories
of all including the truck driver, whose green paint
played into the dullness of Occam’s razor.