I've Never Run So Far

The pre-dawn light and I am thinking
recently awoken from a fever dream
Waiting patiently next to the whirring machine
That every adventure is merely my means
to escape.
Your eyes have haunted me over decades
flying past dust and shocking
in unexpected moments and other people's faces.
I find myself amused to laughter
by the unexpected paper jam.
Pulling accordioned government documents
from the previously unopened paper tray,
The only thing left perfect is my application. My "records" and "instructions" are a mess, perhaps even more so than me. There's an irony here most people would miss.

I am lifting the old, soon to be discarded identification document to my face. It still has our smell -- no amount of mishaps and adventures are going to disguise half-smoked cigarettes and rain. Nothing ever could. The smell, like you, is too distinct for its own good.

It seems a waste to get rid of this passport, five years and not a single stamp to show for it. Lots of cigarettes, concert tickets, adult films... but no places outside the country of my birth. Oh sure, I took a train 3000 miles -- that was the first escapist adventure -- but shit, this bitch hasn't even been to Canada.

My new mistress is taking me far across the ocean, but first it's taking me back across America. No trains for the traveler this time; won't get a chance to see the plains and hills of Montana and the Dakota like last time. There will be no Monte for me to meet, greet and kiss for two days. No chance to see wind blowing so hard in a rainstorm the rain goes sideways... not this time. Sorry, Minnesota. There won't be a stop in Chicago for me to go to the frozen pier and beg a recollection of the summer sun as I rode the swinging chairs and laughed with my father. No midnight phone call to Ashton informing him of my passage through Indiana and how the streetlights are all blurred together. Just a huge tube of aerodynamic metal in the sky, crammed with a hundred other people, listening to their children. Wishing I could sleep the sleep of children, the sleep of the dead.

That's three thousand miles right there, love. I'll board another plane after that, fly over the stone-cold ocean who won't care if I die if the plane falls if the engine gives out. A plane that will take me from New York to Cologne... three thousand seven hundred and fifty-six miles. Whatever I was running from on the East Coast, I seem to have conquered, and now I find myself having to run from the Northwest. Further than I've ever gone before: a total of six thousand seven hundred and fifty-six miles. What am I running from? Is it you?

I hope it isn't. I love you with all my stupid heart and soul. I could come back for you, but I probably won't.

The Lady begins her gypsy metamorphosis; butterfly into a moth. 'Well, it's all right,' she sighs to herself, watching the smoke curl around her fingers, "Moths see better in the dark anyway."