A thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail
takes at least five months.
In five months:
a fetus is the size of a papaya,
a small home has been fully renovated,
2,450 dollars in rent is paid if you live with three people,
Swahili has been learned incompletely,
the grief of a dead high school teacher is finished,
a person sinks in, gets comfortable,
the planet has turned its back,
Loestrin has travelled out of the system—
who’s to say it’s not just like the Appalachian.

I’d like to make a rope out of my hair
tie it from Georgia to Maine
sail a two-pound apology all the way down
to make up for the places my body will never make it
because five months of footwork
is too long to stop nurturing a life
that is not worth living anyway
but this way
I don’t have to lose.