One thousand two hundred and twenty miles.

I’ve done this drive too many times, alone, like a well-worn neural pathway that I am so over.

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Evening.

I’ve done this drive too many times, alone,
like a well-worn neural pathway that I am so over.
The gigantic cross on the side of 1-40.
People taking selfies in front of the
Welcome To Texas sign
(like Kane and me, in 2007).

At hour three I start thinking of absence. Hour four,
of Counting Crows around the bend and cracked doors,
and hour five, the little yoga studio
in the hippie town with the hipster church.

Eleven is Tolle’s The Power Of Now and
voice memos and screaming and sounding out
how imaginary conversations might go out loud.

By fifteen I am nearly a full year ago,
leaving home with what was left trailing behind,
wide-eyed and road tripping —
alone with the alone — together:
like an entheogen, snowing new possibility
atop the same old grooves.

Sixteen hours and fifty eight minutes:

mo[u]rning.