Apr 28, 2015

The Long Highway Shifts

Life is a lot of grief.
I looked up from 
writing that and saw
a clock.
                    My dad and I
walked into the Kohl’s at
the strip mall this morning
to buy a suit for his father’s
wake. At the end of the
parking lot was the interstate.
“As much as I miss you and
Mom,” I said, “I don’t miss that
noise.”
          The morning my mom called me
and told me Papa died, I played banjo
staring out my living room window at
the mountains, then went for a run
down the highways lined with pine and
fir and spruce so dense, ten trillion needles
pointing into the air, pointing into my skin,
breathing in the snow and exhaling into me.
Imagine, trees breathe! You can’t hear it
so it’s like they’re already dead. I was so
thankful the horizon was the end of a high-
way, a forest, and over the trees a mountain
peak. I was so grateful I didn’t see a car
for three miles. I was so thankful I didn’t
slip on the the thin ice that was everywhere
because it got warm after it snowed.
Everything melted and froze again,
melted and froze, and now
conditions are shitty and
you have to watch it
while you run
down the long
highways.




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