Texas, you ran on me like blood,
miles of road building up for an anticlimax.
Sun on her back, begging for rust,
wringing herself for another hour of daylight.
Green and golden grass through the windshield
speckled with red.

Made me want the coming dust,
made the vibrant greens of the humid East
seem like anthills worth cementing over,

Golden red. Wind whipped through the car windows,
nostalgia in a place I'd never seen.
I wanted to break you. Time was too still,
change was too slow for me. Southwest America had my name
drawn in dead bug splatters and drained coffee cups
somewhere ahead.

Time doesn't translate to these long miles,
it's just you and me and something new, something old.
Me and the windshield and the dead bugs,
and flitting thoughts of North Carolina,
repeated songs, hard silences,
and something chilling about these dead towns.
Some salty Pacific air already on my tongue.

Something nameless to remind me that being young is bittersweet,
and I don't know what I'm running from