The air of the small town is almost pure—

The air of the small town is almost pure—

lazed with the distinct smell of cigarettes and motor oil.

there is a church at almost every corner,

there is a McDonald’s and a Wendy’s

and a hardware store,

and trucks that drive with the bodies of cut trees behind,

I drive far away from them.

there are broken roads and broken homes

and plenty of broken people,

politicians who lie and poison,

neighbors who hate.

But I have learned to discipline my mind 

to function without a substance in the darkness,

only now it dwells in the irrational fear

of an innocent assailant—

slowly approaching me while I pump gas 

in the station someone tried burning down 

a few months ago.

Of old friends, I have none left,

they all escaped me, 

I’m in it deep—the solitude,

in the land of guns and fentanyl,

I found glory in the fruit trees that give

without asking,

in the winding roads ruled by muscle trucks 

with headlights like captured flames

—decaying creatures,

in the loins, the sun decomposes the muddled flesh,

marring a soft creation,

the cows are beautiful, they look free in the morning,

but they are 

grass-fed red,

when I was young I wanted fame,

the kind that sickens, the kind that stains

now all I yearn for is isolation,

now all I want is to be swallowed by 

the loneliness I was trying to escape,

and all I want to hear is silence,

I like people, I like them, I do,

I like them to tell me their stories and their dreams,

just far, far, far away from me.