watch the sun set red through wildfire smoke
from the roof of a battered minivan
that's weathered all the storms of
our Oregon mountain home--
we find ourselves here, repeatedly.
lost on rocky dirt roads by the cliff's edge,
trying to figure out what it means to be twenty
in a world that more and more these days
seems to be crumbling around us--
drive us somewhere never listed on the map,
with music blaring through broken speakers
we'll make our own destination.

The snow collapses on top of each other,
the crystalline flakes stacking up prettily;
winter is the season when
beauty falls in disarray

Looking at the map,
my eyes find their way to the unnamed borders,
the many lines that divide the land
and the sea,
the civilised,
and the savage.
I dimly wonder
if those lines are truly the ends of the earth,
or are they beginnings of a new world?