Love's Truck Stop

it's nice to move in a different way. it's nice to spend a minute under skies that are not Chicago's, and to let my fingers walk out routes on a shiny new map.

the twisting pinks and blues of road maps resemble nothing less than the highways they purport to describe, but really who can say anything descriptive about highways? long dumb strips of asphalt plowing through who-even-knows-what country out past the truckstops and the walmarts.

and damn, girl, whatcha doing just walking down my block in chicago with yr dreads up in buns and yr sweet grin i haven't laid eyes on since north carolina and years ago in our somewhat overlapping adolescences. this world is too small and too big and oh man it keeps flinging different pieces of my life into juxtaposition.

smear sneer

I don't usually have specific tihngs to say about work, but some days...

Today I had to deliver a package to a fancy hotel up north, with something else I had to pick up quick nearby, and the smarmy concierge took five minutes to look up the guest's name, and then wouldn't accept it because his computer said "Jeremy" and the envelope in my hand said "Jerry". It seems straightforward enough to me...but I had to call in and have my company call in to the sender and when we finally got confirmation of the name and came back inside to tell this fella, he just flirted and giggled with some guests while I fidgeted in front of him forever. Finally I talked him into taking it, and set my clipboard on his desk. He filled out some parking slips, looked at something in the desk drawer, kept saying, "I'll just take care of this first..." until I just asked him, pleading, "Could you please just sign it? My other deliveries are going to be late now." and he kind of batted his eyes and scrawled something illegible. Oh geez.

These things only happen when I'm in a hurry...something of the power people know they have over my time gives them some satisfaction, and I've worked enough service industry jobs to know that there are days when it just feels good not to jump and rush (and bow and scrape) for everyone who wants me to. And maybe after kissing up to hoity toity hotel guests all day, it helps him to be able to make me do what he wants, but twenty minutes of wasted time when I have my own job to do...is just a bummer.

What a weird stupid world where we're all trying to get back at each other even when we're strangers, and the only form of empowerment is inconveniencing someone else just to show you can. You know?

lamplit

there are things that seem crucial sometimes, like lamplight through dusty screens, like the sound of water falling into the sink, like the soft songs of girls who can't sing.

i'd live out another winter here; i just worry it'd go like the last, and the last before. friendships here don't open up like i'd like them to. people don't relax and smile at you like they should. i am still uncomfortably wearing this big city skin.

stretch out

catch yr lip on yr own teeth by mistake, and again. forget how to walk through a roomful of sporadic strangers. i try to glue the soles back onto my shoes but they are ornery like you wouldn't believe.

(if i were wolverine, with metal running alongside my bones, i'd have cleats implanted onto the pads of my feet to click in and out as i please. oh yeah.)

these days i feel strong and fast and you keep talking 'bout my legs, which is mostly what i need to feel powerful, but i'm worried that i'll take a job indoors and start feeling sleepy and slow again. portland has such a small, hilly downtown. how do they even have room to stretch their legs?

the inside lane

My heritage is one part swampy New Orleans and one part sunny southern California, but parental bloodlines aside, it's a multitude of twining stems rooted always in North Carolina soil. And if we move in a few months, like we say we will, back up to a soft rainy city at the farthest diagonal from the place that's left this red clay stuck permanently between my toes, I don't know when I'll ever find the time to make it back home. I need to sink my teeth into the South; I need to spend an autumn pedaling through cooling air and crisp leaves and the desolation and new growth and beauty and sly appeal of these musty green places.

Everything always seems so urgent, and every decision sometimes tastes too sharply of the regrets of every path not taken.

It's too easy here in Chicago to accept invitations and then forget to show up. It's too easy to blame the July heat or the February snow for my lethargy. My sniffly nose and swelling throat trapped me sweating at home this weekend, but for sporadic bouts of alleyway shopping and trips to the garden store to haul soil back for transplanting hundreds of small beautiful basil plants into tires and pots and trays and anywhere they'd fit with just a little more distance from each other. They transplant so well; they shrug and smile up towards the sun, wait for water and jam their toes even more firmly into this new earth.

If only, so many things.

I might quit my job for a month, or more, and ease this need for new skies, for the coasts I'm used to, before we strike out westward and leave it all even farther behind.

reflect

because we know that there is meaning in the mirroring of our cheeky smiles. because there is sometimes life and death or at least breath in the memories of grassy knees and all the relived childhood games we might not have gotten the chance to play the first time around. because every time i stub my toe it jolts me into reality.

& when a crowd of sweet faces on bikes show up at our house so we can ride off to rusty fences, endless train tracks, and treacherous rooftops, that's what jolts me into the reality of what matters most sometimes. i'm sick of being reluctant to make friends.

this is what counts, or some part of it, at least.

we went to oregon last weekend.

we'll eat saltines and dream of the ocean. (we'll forget to send letters but stock up on stamps.)

somewhere between the high desert and the trees i wrapped my fingers into his belt while we buzzed a scooter around a strange sleepy town. the air was dry and it smelled like pine needles and bloody noses. later, in portland, we revisited all these different months of our different pasts, sipped coffee - good coffee - on a sidewalk in the sun, and left way too soon. i invent regrets. my secret treasure map leads to too many different places at once in paths of deep soft creases from my linty pockets.

but chicago has such a big rumbling heart, and the hot breath of the subway is bursting from the grates beneath our feet. the tomato plants are just coming to flower.