Ornamental

Sedona
Santa Fe
Taos
obsession is a road trip I’ll never take
calling in the name of Edward Abbey, in the voice of myself in a dream.
it's the year of the desert and ornamental longing
post-luck clarity in memories of the first stop from home in a long list of firsts.
you never forget your first life, and the distance between adolescence and New Mexico.
my first love was a bombing to combat loneliness that circles back every few years
a reminder that I’m as dead as I am alive,
like former lives abandoned in boxes and hangers at Goodwill.
those are my old uniforms, and I don’t like telling people who I used to be.
a thousand futures from a single past, lost
in the perfume of places I’ve been dripping noxious from my eyes
wide open facing west.
you never forget your first desert
the sunset’s yolk sliding into the sagebrush
and the spirit of desolation sneaking years off your life
with cigarettes in social circles.
speeding north on 54
there is no way to read the cracks in the road against the heat
the only surprise on the highway is the constant distance of the horizon,
80mph as far as forever, wide and dry
El Paso
Orogrande
Alamogordo