Now She Calls It Sorrow

She put willow switches
knotted bits of string and fear
sharper corners of gumwrapper chain
and the long stuff of regret
into a pasteboard guitar case
and threw it in the trunk

On Northerly Island
she took one last look at the skyline
mocked on Lake Michigan
like the stillborn wave
of a tune nobody played
then off on LSD
to hit the Skyway

She hoped to clear Indiana and Ohio
on the overnight
nothing to see there
but the steel mill she once
called Emerald City

She hoped to stop dawn
with the blindfold of Appalachia

She tried to sink stars
with the twitch-dog lights
of towns roiling by
but none went down

She had to pay to piss
she bought a fill and grim pie
at a Shell in Sandusky
spilled famished on the turnpike
all french fries and gravy
because the road was rising

She spooned out
of Breezewood’s bowl
her numb knuckles knew
it was nothing to home
and sun was on the foothills

An hour forty five
to the stripmall she once called
Enchanted Forest

Driving blind
like tip-toeing night rooms
to the yellow house on the hill
she once called green

She idled for fifteen
until a shadow slurred
across the window
she once called hers
And flickered dead out.

Image by Chmyphotography on Unsplash