She left Reno
in a satin slip
the color of hot coins
pouring from slots,
wearing chewed-up tennis shoes,
mirrors multiplying her,
the marquee burning out
letter by letter,
a hush pressed between her teeth
as if saving the last note.
I followed,
a gangly shadow,
mother’s voice in my ear:
life is not a freeway exit.
But she was the exit.
She drove west
through a glittering throat.
In Tonopah she was a waitress
with red stains on her wrists,
the sleeves tugged low,
coffee pouring thin as blood.
In Barstow she was a sun-bleached Madonna,
halo blistered, mouth lit in stained glass.
At a gas station in Needles
she shimmered into a coyote’s shadow
and slipped behind the pumps.
Everywhere,
a new disguise,
a flicker at the edge of vision.
Not the whole leap,
just rehearsal.
Casinos blinked like electric relics.
Truckers called her sugar,
greedy hands counting her ribs
as if she were a paycheck
sweating in their fist,
but she slipped away each time,
her silhouette already moulting-
a serpent skin, a smoke-trail,
a saint’s shadow burning off the wall.
By Malibu the night
had softened to velvet.
The pier at Zuma
leaned into the Pacific
like a broken rib.
She sang once-
low, cracked, unfinished-
and the slip fell from her
like the last lie.
Her body cut into the dark tide,
this time there was no disguise.
I waded in after her,
ankles bruised by rock.
The sea lit with jellyfish,
not lanterns but wires,
each pulse a warning,
each glow a wound.
Standing at the highway’s end-
no exit left,
just the Pacific’s mouth
closing around her.
Entry: recovery and renewal- route: Black Rock Desert to Zuma