It was the winter everyone was moving east,

chain smoking cigarettes, snorting cocaine.

Trying to curate a museum of themselves.

I’m sorry, I’ve been writing anything but myself.

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I drove three days here. Sleepless hotel nights collecting

all these shedding selves. Open road, drifting semis, ghost stories.

Fog so sharp, I felt it scratching at my throat. Must be my folklore.

The mountains stretched and flattened out before us. I’m forgetting to miss them.

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Bad breakfast sandwich and I shat myself across Nebraska.

Held our necks under the water pump until I was shivering.

Lazy-eyed gas station clerk thumbing magazines.

Glaring as I walk into the critter crawling bathroom again again again

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Arrive to my first soul echoing. Blank walls, air mattress weeks.

In our new apartment, my cat is reunited with sun spots

on the carpet. Freckles piercing my lover’s face, as if this was anything

but February. We gather to watch the incandescent sunset portrait

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the windows each evening. This is no basement living. My cut-short hair smells

like my brother’s. Mom says it’s the scent of sunshine. Try not to think of him

gathering inches out west. Home grows past the foothills, sagebrush, goatheads

under bare feet. The wasp nests in our rusting trampoline. The garden snakes

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Mitchell found in the backyard, he held one up by its throat to show me.

There was a girl I left, I think somewhere in the mountains. Last night I dreamt her,

soft and sweet. What is more woman than gently nurturing what could have been?

And yet never seeing her again is all I ever wanted. Maybe this is running away,

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but I have an interview for a job tomorrow so it’s probably just life. I come back

to myself in meandering days. I make my love coffee every morning, a touch sweeter

than I like it. I met her three deaths ago, leaves only starting to change and crisp.

How long I existed without seeing a yard at dusk lit up with fireflies.