Rumination: Love

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Editor’s Note: To experience the poem as the poet would prefer, please see the PDF below.

After passing another
I’ve been implored a
so fine. I will. This
my pinkie toe to my
through a Californian
or elbow, Utah’s rib
Too easy, this meta-
surrounded by buzz-
and inaccurate, judg-
Botox, fat freezing,
which say body loud
to parse cabins in
or Montana Moose
Plus lots and lots of
to find something to
going 85 miles per
car along this entire
when the sun falls to
to my right, I feel like
along your back,
on either side your
mine. That’s what it
to borrow chromo-
rectangle tap for a
are not good listeners,
coaxed quite the muse.
I have cinnamon bears
as a place to drive to.
possess a 1,433.52-
something that long
that human DNA is 10
could stretch 61 times
that doesn’t explain
So darling, when I get
this highway together.
if I’m Mexico, then all
in the middle from
With people passing
engines powered by
My arrival tonight

“Adopt a Highway” sign:
hundred times or more
one: I-15, traveling from
index finger, slight curve
ankle, an Arizona armpit,
cage—why a skeleton?
phor, a cliche bison skull
ards in a sagebrush desert
ing by the billboards for
and 1-800-JESUS, all of
-er than eternal. But how
Idaho’s Snake River Valley,
Moss (an ice cream flavor)?
lawyers. Look, I’m trying
be angry about when I’m
hour and can’t see another
mountain range. Truth is
my left and the cliffs rise
my fingers are driving
smoothing the soft plateaus
spine’s ridges. Mine. Not
means to adopt, to love,
somes or exchange a plastic
tank of gasoline. Audiobooks
but Taylor Swift has
And I won’t be lonely if
for company and you
As if anyone could really
mile ribbon of rock. As if
could be a child. They say
billion miles long, or
to the sun and back but
our years of infertility.
there, let’s finally adopt
If you are Canada and
we have to do is meet
either end. An unbroken line.
through, between us, on
burning liquid. Who knows.
could be the end of a long road.

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