It felt like we had been driving for hours,
Because we had been.
I kept my eyes focused on the horizon
That only seemed far because we were chasing after daylight,
like time.
I could feel her next to me,
The way I always did.
Still,
like a rabbit caught by a farmer with a pitchfork.
It was always too late for flight,
how often, though, you fled.

My body felt heavy next to hers,
Too present for the occasion.
I moved.
She sighed.
I stopped.
Her sigh landed on my buckling shoulders
And made itself comfortable.

On the other side of her window
Colors dripped from the sky
Into so beautiful a mess,
It could not possibly last.

I thought,
Quietly as I could,
As she watched the colors collapse onto each other,
until the darkness chased away
the last echo of the sunset.

Fixated yet forlorn,
The way I stare at clocks
And calendars.
Minutes and days collapsing onto each other like fire,
on the burning desert sand.
Only to be chased away,
By a farmer with a pitchfork
In his ticking hands.