I ask Trevor why he carries around his passport
from when he was 14
as his only form of government I.D.
It's for cigarettes
he says with a shrug,
and takes a drag from the passenger seat
of my car.
He reminds me of someone
who shouldn't be in this era, a misplaced Kerouac,
and at any moment
would hop a freight train
or subway car
to pass through someone else's life
in the time it takes to turn breath
into carbon.
Trevor, I say,
you know you can't get out of the country with that. It's expired.
I know,
he smirks.
I just like the illusion that
I'm going somewhere.
There's a sad sweetness in the way
he keeps his heart
in a list of area codes;
that home is synonymous
with an expired ability to leave
the way a seagull takes to ocean breeze.
I don't know what he'd do if he actually had the chance.
Trevor's passport
is nearly filled with other worlds
he prefers,
and other lives he's lived,
in only a leather jacket
and a pair of scuffed up Adidas.
I keep wondering
about the day he'll turn us
into stamps to include in the rest of his collection,
squeezed into one of the few blank spaces left
in a crowded itinerary,
(cemetery),
and then
he'll renew his passport.
