good-bye, in not so many words.

I was shoeless
feet sinking into the soft earth
on the side of the highway

the weeds and old McDonald's cups
long burnt strips of rubber
and browned cigarette butts

illuminated and faintly glowing
in the flickering yellow headlights
the car hummed as the fan kicked on

the song that had been playing
that had just began when THIS whole thing started
finally came to an end

with a few twangy guitar rifts
and the final lonely lyrics
that were the only words

the only words between us
as we clutched fists
and glared into each other's eyes

I opened my mouth
to shout out all of the recriminations
you truly deserved (you know you did)

but a car sped past
a blur of shouted insinuations
squealing tires

drowning out my words
even those final three
spoken with an aching shame and honesty

then you smiled
that one dimple in your left cheek
flicked out at me

I think I had to smile in return
that one dimple in my right check
winked back at you

we dropped our grip
stepped apart
and I haven't really seen you since.

point in case.

pause.

My car got too hot, the road got too long,
I needed to get away from old mixed CDs and piles of paperwork,
somewhere 60 miles north of Memphis.

I parked onthe crumbling shoulder,
climbed the incline thorugh the wiast high grass
and nodding summer heavy heads of lazy susans

and seated myself on the rain moist ground.
Kicked off my soft brown boots
passed down from an aunt when I was just a teen

and she was still alive,
flexed my toes in coarse grass,
propped myself on my elbows.

A quick flirty breeze caught my long hair
worked it into tangles over my head,
around my face,

snarled halo lifting and dropping with the wind.
I tilted my face to the bleary October sun
to watch a bright yellow cropduster

swoop over the interstate,
buzzing over the drone of the I-55 traffic
and the chatter of the cicadas in the high weeds around me.

We, the insects and I,
watched the clouds mass and gather
in the muddied sky over our heads.

I plucked a slender blade of yellowed grass
and chewed it as I thought about
where I should be going

and where I wanted to be going instead.
Cocked my head to listen to fingers of music
snatched from the open windows of bright red

and blue big rigs streaming past;
I created my own love songs from the snippets heard
and those I created to fill in the blanks.

I wish I had a voice,
wish I could sing a song with our/my name in it -
but my voice is no good and my words have failed me.

Even as I think this my car is cooling,
the day is passing,
I pick myself up to go, irresolute,

Far away from all of this
someone may be thinking about me
or someone else has entirely forgotten about me and .....

they are all far away
and today is today.
I wave to the sunshine hued plane,

drop my blade of grass to the ground with his brothers,
and climb back in to my dusty red car,
pointing it north once again.