Maps

i. Pack your things, fit it all in the car, hey ma don’t wait up, and drive with the aux off since the old songs still carry weight, don’t they, I’m heading home California, where the strangers say hello and don’t straight away assume the worst, where they may not love recklessly but they love enough, enough maybe to cool my desire, till I don’t need gin when I think of you oh at least until sleep comes easy, I think I gotta take a break, find a job I actually like say something with benefits, a little less drama, a little more direction — I say maybe next time you call I won’t answer, though I want to hear you say it, love say you only meant to do as little harm as you can to the woman that loves you.

ii. Made new, content inside a bubble that could burst at the slightest trouble, I wait off at the museum for you, Alex, bless them, said a museum, really, for a first date but they don’t get it, how the room full of still things can feel like a dusty chapel, don’t stray too far from what you know, they say, but something I was made to do is love well, to stand in quiet rooms and let them change me, and every time I look at you my hands are always giving me away, doing something desperate like kinds of small confessions pressed into your palms, who knows why, not I, your pretty heart all the while spins me around like a marionette in that show we loved kind of like the breeze in the Austin nights always reminds me of you.

iii. I’ll pull the car over to find some rest, we’ve been driving all night ignoring our maps stay here a minute, watch the gold paint the hills in the morning and as we wait the sky is pink and white they just don’t do sunrises like they used to, do they, same small things all feel new with you in the passenger seat I don’t pack for the worst anymore or worry about the road, just bask in love up in the hills greener than you ever thought possible, except here you don’t have to think, there’s no pretending, only wild unbounded certainty like stray cats always know how to spoil a sunny afternoon, not I, oh my love, the easy part will always be falling in love say it now, say it later either way you know I know it was always you.