the in between
vol. 2
that winter never ended
but when it was supposed to be spring your dog died and my car kissed the concrete that lined the Houston highway with both of us in it so you moved back home which was the plan all along and i was alone again
And in Arkansas I disappeared for three days and I tried to hide behind my professor’s second hand lens and the fine red delta dust kicked up by my new used black car which I never wanted anyways.
And the summer stretched out shimmering with record breaking heat and always just out of reach just a few more miles to go. so i chased it across eight states in two weeks a strange new place each night, fleeing frantic, running from everything you gave me last year which should never have been mine at all
and worry carved out my cheekbones and tugged loose my clothes which stuck to my skin slick with southern heat and pulled tighter each day
And it was the summer that I found out no road is infinite and when I met the end of the line on the Georgia coast and a thunderstorm threatened to flatten my little tent at night you called me. and you picked up where we and left off but I didn’t. and you asked me what a rain fly is and if I was safe and how was everything so far and I told you that maybe under different circumstances I could have loved you but circumstances weren’t different so I couldn’t and maybe I’ll see you in St. Louis next spring.
And on the first of July I watched my shoes melt into the Selma sidewalk. The same ones I’d bought a lifetime ago for my first day of school that you liked so much that were finally cool that were once bright white clean now covered in dirt from at least one dozen states and they shimmered and swam below me because it’s 108 and threatened to stick me to the concrete if I didn’t go soon.
But when I got to Savannah we the three of us crowded in our tiny rented room to watch the sky spoil our plans with marbles of hail but we called it readymade ice cream. and we tumbled through the towering palm and pine jungles on the Carolina coast towards a different edge of the world this time on our own desert island and we danced on the sand and illustrated our insides with our toes but tomorrow we’d be a thousand miles apart again.
And later I called you. Trembling in the parking lot of the always-empty-except-for-me hotel that had been frozen in time one St. Patrick’s day in the 70s with its chartreuse bathroom tiles and cigarette burn curtains and I told you I couldn’t keep up with you so you let me go.
