Tourists

Doesn’t feel long ago when we saw mountains

Hanging my head out the window just to catch some salt air on my tongue

I held my breathe as we bent around the rock

Felt like we were driving on top of the ocean

Strange how touching the edge of death

Eyes wide

No guardrails

Can make you feel so young.

I imagined my body impaling itself on the rocks down below without a sound

The waves washing me into their blue abyss

Something about that made me feel so whole

The Earth just swallowing me up

So careless, crass, and unromantic

Laughing at my serious and aching soul

A benevolent mother sending me off with a wink and a kiss.

We listened to Kate Bush through the desert

While the forest burned in the distance

Red embers floating up to touch a low hanging moon

I’ve never seen it look so big and haunted

With a vermilion glow around it

Felt like I could chase it down

Place my hand upon it

Lean in close, hear it pour its secrets into the dry and dying Earth

Leave us soaked in its analeptic lagoon.

Doesn’t feel long ago when we hugged Redwoods

Why do I cry when I think of trees?

Remember when we used to climb them as kids

Spending our days with faces covered in dirt

Our calloused hands sticky with sweat and maple taffy?

Do you think we could make it all the way to the top now that we’re older?

Or does our confidence only stretch through our minds and our cavities?

Let’s say we try it one day to watch the world like gods

See it without all the filters and pollution and celebrities

Are we destined to fall from such great heights?

Feigning spineless kings

Or are we the hope, the hopeless, the pining ones?

The half alive, the wonder, the dying leaves?

A couple of years ago we were living off of only moments

Chasing visions with a gas tank a quarter full

You’d look at me from the driver’s seat

Somehow we missed Ohio

Purring cats

Broken porch rails

Worn fabric folding into our sides of the couch…

Never thought I’d be a tourist

In a place where my hands could finally touch the ocean

In a place where the pillowcases felt a little softer

In a place where our chests no longer felt that dark pull.

Doesn’t feel long ago when the future felt so certain

Just a kid in class learning about a white American history

We sang mindless pop songs on our tacky yellow and purple jukeboxes

Britney

Christina

Mariah

We worshipped lyrics about dumb boys and wept at posters of Backstreet…

We talked of war in black and white

Marveling at such ancient relics

We scalped the fat off the top of the meat

They sold us houses and marriage and college courses and babies

They promised us heroes on big screen TVs.

What was once a cornucopia pulled its flesh off right before my grown, restless eyes

An elaborate oasis set up by a thirsty devil

Leaving the world uncivilized

Bankrupt brains

Walmart Hitlers trying to cage and wash the menagerie

And I always thought of myself as an explorer

Never drank the punch from the money machines

Now in the daylight my skin and my bones they feel colder

Every night, though I try to leave it behind, I still can’t forget when they taught us to dream.

Feels so long ago since my inhalations were cocaine clouds of innocence

Sucking in sugars that perfumed the easy air

Before he touched me he was still my lion-heart

I never thought about the space between our chests when he hugged me

I never denied the fact that he truly loved me

I didn’t know trust could be broken and never repaired.

They say all little girls grow up to marry their daddies

But when I fell in love it was because he is nothing like you

Every man in my life felt like an open sore

Just a well to soak up the alcohol poured

Different faces in hands, feet buried in sand, digging myself out to find someone new.

Sometimes it feels like there’s no going forward

Even though going back isn’t there too

There are no heroes or gods who want to listen

To savages who raid everything that glistens

We treat the world like a hotel, a meth binge, a superstore

We throw our anger around like a death sentence

My mom cries on the steps, drunk on the memories that hold her in submission

I lose faith, I even lose silly superstitions.

Yet you hold my hand like a rope in water

We somehow turn these whispers into roars

And here we roam, always wanting a little something

A hole in the chest, minds incapable of rest

Always carrying packed bags that never quite touch the floor.