There are packed bags in the boot of a car and a chill that’s felt as the wind winds through looped coils of wool in a jumper. This is you.
You are the motel, the diner, you are things in a vast expanse, where crass greenery grows from the driest of ditches.
You are the deep woods watched from a car window; The Interstate, intent on going on forever; a voice counting forward and then back (asking, are we there yet?).
There is the hum of an engine with a million miles to go, hands on a wheel, the changing of gears and you: a deer captured by headlights, stunned and stubborn and fragile as crushed bones.
You are words, logic, numbers — whatever can be caught in a net of frightened thought.
You are the heat of the moment.
You are everything that’s left in a room someone owned for a night — someplace imagined, scratched, rough and faded in memory.
Hands cover ears, breath is held imperfectly.
There is ink scrawled down an arm, a reminder on a wrist: you are pigment that won’t budge.
Cat’s eyes trail behind headlights; a needle thumps on vinyl somewhere — you are the owner of its long forgotten song.
Grain ripples in an endless field, burnt orange falls below a horizon, the land whispers small prayers: in this is you.
You are a smattering of memories never had.
You are Pennsylvania, a photograph of someplace I never knew.
(Image: Tema Stauffer)
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