Brooklyn, NY

Pennsylvania disappears like an ocean of bad drivers and pricey turnpikes, you grumble all the way to the East Coast but find a parking spot around the corner from dear friends and spend a night on their Philadelphia pull-out. A toddler wakes you in the morning before you race the last few miles to the Verrazzano-Narrows and slide into a Brooklyn side street, all the plants intact and a giggle bubbling in your chest. You love the country, but the Manhattan skyline is what lets your soul rest at last. 

There's no road map yet for solving that equation. 

But you're not about to stop trying. 

You came two thousand miles across the country, did you bring the dark Word, or did you merely bring the Wow, is it you who are angelic or is it the road you leave in your wake? I am already nostalgic for a roadside inn in Nebraska, for a styrofoam coffee and a thousand unknown miles ahead, for counting cars on the New Jersey Turnpike and remembering the America I already found, time and time again, trying to see it beneath the thick coating of this dark black cloud. 

We are still here, America. We are trigonometry that refuses and easy solution. 

But we're not about to stop trying.

Ohio

You leave Missouri and cross Illinois in the blink of an eye, good riddance, the Mississippi River far behind you. The scenery changes, trees begin sprouting, the temperatures rise in hesitation. The little car that could rolls through larger towns now, impatient drivers and fewer semi trucks for company. New York beckons at the other end of the continent. 

This country is hellbent on kicking us out, on making us regret our choices, on rescinding our piece of the dream, but don’t you know? Clawing your way to a better life is what this country was built on. Settlers feed the machine. 

I am not done with you yet, America. This heartbreak isn’t ours today. 

Rerouting

You wake late, bludgeoned by a blackout curtain and a quiet highway, disoriented in the timezone of the middle. Race down a misty highway but take a wrong turn and curse your naive time optimism. The GPS winds you through industrial zones and lush, suburban neighborhoods; you do not know how to grasp the scenery. Agitated, you force a stop, a breath, a reset. Realize you are in some sort of lovely park, spring breaking through like a new tooth, a blue heron eyeing you suspiciously fromt the edge of a pond. You are crossing America, you can stand to be sidetracked.

You are crossing America. 

If you have to get lost now and then to realize how lucky that makes you, 
then maybe that's on you.

Rock Port

A thousand miles approach, it took half of that just to shake the weight of generations in your blood line. Wyoming disappears in a thunder cloud, Nebraska a carpet of cows, until at last the fever breaks and you can breathe again. The rain rolls across the plains until you pass into Missouri, American bends and stretches underneath your wheels. You wonder why it feels like a farewell tour. 

Wonder why it feels like America is slipping through your fingers when you're still woven in it. 

The sun sets over a rest stop along the highway. It doesn't care for your questions. You cling to that calm like your future depended on it.

Stride

Departures approach, you revel in the limitless feeling of filling a car, of two thousand miles before arrival, of a moment in limbo. America trips and stumbles around itself, but you know that I-80 stretches itself from ocean to ocean, ties a nation together which refuses to be joined. It reminds you the marvel of arriving on its shores, how deep the breath in your lungs. You want to see that it is still there, that all is not lost. 

You're not sure what happens if this is not the case. 

It's time to buck up, America. 

I am not ready to lose you yet.

With Nothing to Say

Your head is all song lyrics, all steady beats and predictable key changes, a breath aligned to order. A desert sun appears above the valley, reminds you of 30 years in its folds. Thirty years of warm skin and just the slightest taste of freedom always on the tip of your tongue. You trace directions over road maps, see your wheels slide across America, wonder if it's a swansong or a vow renewal. Sometimes these things aren't apparent until firmly in the rearview mirror. 

America, are you willing to carry us over the burning coals, or will we turn to ashes underneath the weight of your love? 

America, I'm addressing you. 

I'm talking to myself
again. 

But You Can't Edit

The flowers on your mother's windowsill stretch and bulge and dazzle with their vigor, put you to shame with their will to live, their aptitude for hope. You walk alongside a spring brook and try to feel the same, try to muster the courage for another step, and another. They're trying to break your spirit, you hear across the airwaves, and you know they are right, you know it is the time to look for plaster casts. You're almost ready. 

Driving home, late in the night, the mountain pass turned itself inside out to a wakeup call of a blizzard, dark roads and lone semi trucks painting a scenery around you that spoke only of vastness, only of space. You are so small, so insignificant, and it was always your greatest comfort. Now we must be small and significant, somehow, and you do not know the way. 

Everybody's looking for the exit. 

Why must you be so hell-bent on diving into the depths.