Love (Or at Least Like-Like)

Love (Or at Least Like-Like)

The taste of caffeine at midnight

And the sound of the sedan’s ignition

Shooting echoes around the Harlem parking lot.

The passengers envision four-day vacations.

My eyelids are anvils, and my heart’s a grenade

I’m thrown to the West to detonate.

The blare of the truck's horns

As I drift at the elbows

Of the outstretched arms of Interstate 80.

The trees outside Ohio

Begin to look

Just like dinosaurs,

Hunched like Tyrannosaurus Rexes.

The wheel surrendered, I recline in the backseat

Eyes shut to the landscape,

But the smell of corn postpones sleep.

We are spreading over now

Like your cancer

Once did.

The food here is garbage, you once told me.

And we laughed.

And we shut up.

And we agreed we’ve never missed anything so much.

An ascending elevator,

A pair of perspiring palms.

An 18 hour lurch to this point on an Iowa map.

The sterilized fourth floor

Of a general hospital

With a specific aim:

We’re all here to see you,

But I’m here to save you.