A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: driving

6/30: YOUR HAND ON A COUNTRY ROAD IN A LIGHTNING SHOW

On the darkest country road, I touch your hand in the dark
to remind my wandering mind
of what it feels like to be held while lightning
surrounds the sky the same way my arms do
around you when we sleep together and my breathing
slows down the same way storm clouds move in the sky
Something inside of me is forming
The sky’s bright siren is a warning signal
And where we are going, I have nothing left to fear
It is April and all the flowers laugh in the distance
as my car speeds past rolling hills of bluebonnets
I’m reaching through every reason I have to stay
And your hand anchors me to the Earth like a law
I will always follow. I only know
it took years to see
the possibility of not being alone

Whenever the clouds swallow the lightning,
I know you are my waiting horizon
I know you are the light that stays
I know you are the hand that reaches back

On the darkest country road, I interrogate the fate of my heart
Is this the place we start anew?

I look over to you in awe as lightning circles your face
Songs fill the space between us, music rolls in the clouds

And we listen
as the car carries us forward
together

13/30: SO ME AND JEREMY ARE STUCK IN TRAFFIC AWESTRUCK AT THE WILDFLOWERS WE COULD NOT NAME, OR PINK EVENING PRIMROSE

It’s spring in Texas and I want to name the flowers I see
whenever I’m stuck in traffic on I-10 on the way to Austin.
Me and Jeremy are two men stuck in traffic on the way to Austin,
two men awestruck at the pink evening primrose, though neither
of us can tell the other the name until we look it up on our phones.
Pink evenings are burning in every room of my mind. Everything
I remember is set against a pink evening. Even when dreaming,
I adjust the rearview mirror of my memories, altering endings until
the dark thoughts turn to alternative facts. Never look back.
I change the wild past with each flower we pass, laughing
at the new name,
we both now know.

Nobody has ever asked me why,
I believe in myself with such certainty—
And who wants the truth?