Calling out into the canyon,
Echoing, echoing, echoing.
Sometimes I think I'll die there in the morning light, but then--
a Buzzing. You ask if I'm coming home.
I hear the rumbling of the semi trucks
and they sound so tired. They sound like me.
The Gray enshrouds me and it gets hard to breathe.
I think about that night so often.
I thought we would be a Long time
but you disappeared right before my eyes.
Steam rising from my flesh, with my last breath I ask you to stay;
you remind me that I held the blade.

When the shards of glass Pierced
your skin I felt the Stinging
alongside you.
Mouth gone Dry,
at last I see how my love turned Blind
for nothing more than a Flicker and a Shadow.

I'm going to drive home and it will be cloudy.
Brown then white then
brown again and that
tunnel I hold my breath in and
I wonder if you held yours too.
I hope it snows on my way and
I hope those granules accumulate and
enshroud me until I'm clean in a
winter baptism.
Salt and salt then
juniper trees then sagebrush
and the lonely gas station I find because I exited too early
in the small town that knows it's being used and
people never stay.
Mountains that curve and bend into hills
and I fall back in time into
earth tones and hard hats and
fear and fear and fear.
I feel out of place in my red dress
and my chest tightens.
Compressing, compressing, compressing until I
can't breathe and I feel so
small
and the hills so
small
grow smaller and smaller and
they box me in and
I can't breathe oh God
I know you're not there but please let me
breathe.
Winding roads wound tighter and
tighter that make me feel like I'm driving in circles.
It's my worst fear that I've grown too big
for this place and I want it to
stop I need it to
end and I cry out when I see it,
I grow small again as it comes closer and
when it comes to me,
when I come to it
it gives me my chest back and
gently places my lungs inside.
I am clean and
it knows I'm clean
and I can be here once again.
I drive and it's cloudy and I am home.

The air around me is searing Hot
even though it's only the middle of February, and my chest is Tight
even though I know it's still there in my torso and fits just fine. I imagine the Icy
look on your face if I ever told you those words out loud, the Dull
pain deep inside my rib cage when you say, "Don't be stupid," as if I could help it.

Love spanning 500 miles is Hard.

I feel the loneliness get Heavy
and heavier but I just read my stories and watch my shows and I keep Quiet,
but it's too much and I end up laughing until I know myself, and until I know my heart is Pulsing
and sometimes it's erratic and maybe one day it will miss one beat too many, collapsing on itself in an anatomically correct Black
hole but I won't even scream because the echoes in this void in me are surely Loud enough.