untitled or something

“i’m sick of it,” i say and i mean it; the words taste hard and real and true on my tongue, trampling the edges of my lips.  

“i am sick of it and i want everything back.”

you are shining your shoes with one hand and breathing cancer in deep with the other, puff puff puffing; you look up at me.  

“even the wine?” you ask, eyes so brown brown brown, and that’s not what i meant, but it’s a surrender.  

-

we are in your car and i am not sure why you’re still here.

there is shoe polish staining your fingertips.  “blood,” you say. “battle wounds.”

-

“where are we going?” i ask; left-turn-right-turn-left-turn-right is curing my insomnia but the goddamn timing is always so inconvenient.  i force back a yawn.

“colorado.”

i don’t know how to get there from where we are but i would never tell you that.

“colorado,” you say a little louder because i think you’ve forgotten you said it already and i am just remembering, my thoughts choking and sloshing through this murky mess that’s becoming my mind. i am wondering who spiked my drink.

you went to colorado once with some friends.

you went to colorado once with some friends and you found a snowflake and you put it in a brown paper bag and got onto a plane and got off of a plane and handed me the brown paper bag.  it was wet and dripping and empty but i smiled because you brought me back a dead snowflake.
-

there is a bright green sign welcoming us to michigan when you say, "kiss me," you say, "kill me," you say, "throw me in a furnace with a tight rope and a kite.”

i throw my head back and i laugh.

“you’re high as a kite,” i tell you, eyes fixed on the road, yesterday and today and tomorrow flying by in one big blur of truck stops and toyotas and highway signs, “high – as – a – kite.”

-

it’s four in the morning when we pull into a gas station in arkansas.  i say we’re in denver.

-

you are waking up sick and coughing and alive.  “it’s funny,” you begin, “because you said you were sick of me and now i’m so sick.”

“i never said i was sick of you,” but i am not making things any better.

-

seventy two hours in motel six and you start calling me kid again.  it was endearing, at first.

-

we are in the car but you’re driving and i already know that’s a mistake; you’ve got one hand on the wheel and you’re breathing in cancer with the other, puff puff puffing.

“cigarettes are cheap in little rock,” you say conversationally, casually, cutting-straight-to the-bone-ally.

“mmm?”

you are taking a drag.  “the prices.  they’re pretty damn low, kid.”

i look up and down and everywhere but your face.  “that sounds good.”  it doesn’t sound good to me; it sounds like like disease on sale.

i speak up and down and everywhere.

-

we end up in a city at nine in the morning, my senses suffocated in all the movement.  

you are sucking in the exhaust fumes through a pair of pale lips and smiling and you say, “better than snow.”

sometimes, i am thinking, it’s better not to understand.