My pen stumbles through Illinois,

joking with bus stops about coming home.

Taking photographs of roadsides

(waiting for our skin to appear there).

Touching the shifter, tentative as the

flat of some field rips holes

in the calendars of our together.

The ink line of the highway

pushing past every

smoke-filled morning

as Chicago Sticks up its middle finger

and

chokes on the horizon.

The road rattlesnakes into the belly of regret

somewhere near the center of me burning

every tenement of sleeping hope.

Image by: vxla on Flickr