Picking gnats off my breasts
Cleaning Popsicle 
drips from your lips

The smell of burning charcoal filling
The fresh mountain air,
The desert creosote,

Embracing our lungs,
The Midwestern nothingness
Laughing.

Thriving in pale echoes left by sunsets
We couldn’t hope to remember,
Polaroid memorials litter my dash,

Like the hallways of Christian families 
living in the realm of their God 
and his good graces,

But I exist only within the land of those
Greedy yellow lines, and they are criminals
That control the trade of souls

Unforgiving of homes,
It isn’t where your mail comes,
Or where your love is…

It’s where your hat hangs…
Next to the noose on the hall tree.
It’s this quest for feral freedom,

That the road knows, 
but never tells.
And in that open, red dirt canyon land,

I am not a wife, 
not a concubine, 
not a sinner.

I conspire with Texaco maps over purple horizons,
And this is not an ode to the open stretches,
It is not a simple joy to love or indulge in,

Concrete paths cannot nurture,
But freedom comes with sacrifice, 
and my roots won't rot

Confessing in boxes of listening men
You’re not forgiven there either,
You’re fucked twice and blinded,

Heaven is in the landscape,
In Cajun accents and Rocky Mountains,
The rest is just stained glass perception

Like whores with perfect smiles.
Here hope is not a dead space with
Tire swings and maroon toilets.