Google Maps shows we’ll still be connected
by one lengthy interstate.
A vertical slash of blacktop for 678 miles.
If I don’t turn back. I must not turn back.
Spotify is girl-power, the rhythm of the road.
Beyonce’s on repeat as I head straight south.
I treat the car pedals as a piano’s sustain.
“I’m a grown woman, I can do whatever I want.”
What’s on your playlist now, my Colorado cowboy?
Honkey tonk tunes about being left behind?
About back doors slamming?
In New Mexico, I’m on cruise control.
Settling into the desert.
The vista breaks bad.
Helicopters hover.
Border patrol stations appear like mirages.
Cactus of all spiky sorts bounce into view.
Life is fierce further south.
Barbed wire hoops adorn fenced lots.
Attack dogs pace and pant.
The tailpipes of low riders spark red.
Night falls fast.
But being alone in the scrub
and the broken-down places,
is preferable to being at your mercy
on mad nights, my love.
This sheer rawness will be my reckoning.
Laurie Macomber
Lives in the Alameda District in Las Cruces and has been a writer ever “since I took pen in hand as a child.” She is a retired copywriter with over 500 websites under her belt and has had a couple of poems published beside her winning entry in the Desert Exposure. Laurie sees writing as a “solitary act, meant to be enjoyed by others,” but also feels that it is “cathartic and soul-aligning, even if no one becomes a fan!”
