The Longest Highway in Texas
I’m counting car dealerships to make the time pass faster. There isn’t much to see. My dad is clutching the steering wheel because people are driving like maniacs.
I don’t belong on this road surrounded by MAGA stickers and convenience stores (although, they are the largest in the country!). If I could go, I’d go North.
Some people in this state haven’t seen the seasons change. They haven’t gazed out the window of their lukewarm classroom to see clusters of red leaves fall from trees, or flurries of snow cascading onto sidewalks. I don’t think I am a better person because I have, but I do know that something exists besides guard rails and mild weather.
In New England the forest hummed. The buzz spread deeply from its diagram through the roots of trees through me. The sky did not feel like it would fall down and crush me and turn me two-dimensional. I walk at my own pace. In the winter, time is suspended, clocks frozen over by ice and buried in a fresh layer of snow. The world stops so I can run my fingers through pine needles and reflect.
When it snowed here, the world stopped too. They don’t have enough salt to put on the roads. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t close i35.
That would have been unnecessary. The snow was gone in three hours.
This highway is like my grandmother's living room from the 70’s. The grass looks like it needs to be vacuumed. The spinning car wheels turn up dust that has been there since Christmas of ‘83. The furniture is a refreshing mix of brown, and brown. The dead coyote on the side of the road looks like my great-grandfather slumped on his recliner after he had a heart attack. We would all benefit from an open window.
I don’t dislike her house. She has old photographs on her mantle.
We’ve been driving for a while and the sun is becoming even with the earth. Down here, the sunsets are more beautiful. The sky transforms into pastel, the colors fade together seamlessly and organically. My eyes are flooded with orange and I have to squint to see cows grazing on the right of the dashboard. In this lighting, even the 200 trucks on display to the left look like they are meant to be there. And when the stars emerge they are not contained, like in a planetarium dome. My view of the universe is unobstructed; nothing separates us.
At the end of this highway there could be a cliff, and I could kick my feet into nothingness.
There also could be Mexico.
To Someone Who Kept Me Awake in September
9/19/2020
West Monroe, Austin, Texas
Stormy, heavy air
9:51 pm
I had a dream we were falcons. Peregrine falcons, to be specific. They are the fastests birds on the planet. I saw two once, on a grey day at the beach. Their streamlined bodies weaved back and forth against the murky horizon, and with wings pinned straight against their torso hurtling headfirst into the waves. Nothing could ever come close to catching them. They disappeared for a while, beneath the surface, and I looked through the binoculars hanging around my neck. I didn’t know how to use them, but at least now I looked like someone who watched birds in their free time. Moments later, they emerged, together, with struggling fish in their talons, and they flew Eastward until they were nothing but fleas on clouds. That isn’t how my dream went, though.
Before you told me, I already knew. Before I told you, you already knew.
I wore princess dresses as a kid.
This isn’t my narrative.
I wanted boys to notice me at parties.
This isn’t my narrative.
I always planned on taking my husband's name.
This isn’t my narrative.
There was a girl at summer camp who had the most beautiful hair. It was long and silky, and she let me play with it. Maybe that’s what it was. Or, there was this mermaid from a TV show. It was probably her.
It could have just been you, the exception to the rules I’d set for myself.
When you stopped looking me in the eye I had a panic attack in the laundry room. It was snowing outside, and the linoleum box was the only place I could find loneliness. As I shook, I heard the thud of clothes spinning in the dryer, and it reminded me of that time when you played the guitar. I always liked how soft your expression got. I even asked you to sing for me once, but I immediately regretted it. You aren’t a good singer.
Peregrine falcons don’t hesitate when they plunge into cold water, but when we were falcons, we did. We held out our wings to stop the momentum, missed the ocean entirely, smacked our bodies to the ground and buried our heads in the sand.
9/19/2020
West Monroe, Austin, Texas
Lightning 4 miles away
11:45 pm
You once said walking into a bog is like traveling to a different planet, and I understood. Bogs are lined with tiny Tamarack trees, delicate Labrador Tea, and carnivorous Pitcher plants.
Everything is silent, because nothing loud can survive there. We both know what it is like to have a stampede in our mind, but the sounds die down when our feet touch the moss carpeted ground.
I forget about the no I’m nots. And the I wish I wasn’t. And the nighttime wars fought on a ceiling battlefield.
What if we are more than people think we are... stop turn over I’ll tell my sister about it... stop turn over
I try to dissolve confusion the way a bog dissolves whatever tries to swim in it. People dump bodies in bogs when they want no one to ever find them.
We could live on a farm in Maine together... stop turn over You can milk the cows, I’ll collect the eggs… stop turn over
The night after I realized what you were to me, I wanted to throw myself on to the bog's breakable skin, and sink down to where the bodies used to be. I could dissolve cell by cell.
9/20/2020
West Monroe, Austin, Texas
Partly cloudy, still air
2:34 am
Why did you text me about your broken ankle?
I fell off my fence.
That fence we climbed to get to your roof? The time when we tried to stargaze? I could see more stars in Austin than I could in New York. I could feel you breathe next to me. You held my hand and we talked about our moms, pretending, the way we always do, that all of this is normal.
Talia Skaistis