Knox The Girl
I saw her when our caravan first entered
the campground to dump our waste, enjoy
some hot running water, and hawk
our odds and ends. There were always
the sort at these places who eagerly participated
in our economy of scrounged and crafted
goods and mind-altering substances, if only
because they knew their role and relished playing it.
She sat barefoot in the open door of a Mercedes Sprinter,
eyes fixed to a phone, absentmindedly petting
a dog while she scrolled. Her hair was the yellow
of the dry summer grass that blankets each side of I-80
through Nebraska’s high plains, before you hit
Cheyenne. She had a doll’s features but stormy,
contemplative eyebrows that made her seem older
than she looked, which I thought
was roughly my age.
Dawn caught me staring and made
a contemptuous noise in her throat. Trust fund
vanlife baby, she snarled. Dawn had joined us
in Sedona about six months prior
with her boyfriend, Rowdy, and I suspected
her trustfunder kid accusation was mostly confession.
Back to the Girl—she reminded me of this:
For years, I’ve left my heart as a trail of breadcrumbs
strewn across America’s highways, falling
in love a thousand times for five- or ten-minute stretches
with girls I wanted to know.
What was the point of allowing myself
anything more? My life was vapor.
Fog before the sunrise.
I was tired of a freedom that gave
no breath to love.
I wanted the simple pleasure
of being with someone longer
than five days, the way
characters did in the candy-colored
books I got from Little Free
Libraries and returned two time zones away.
But to do that, you need a home.
I had known what it meant to have
a home once. I was young but I don’t remember
being gnawed on by any Beast when I last lived
in one. I wanted that again, to live in the same place
for a whole week, a month, a year.
This awakening was the inch of water rising
to drown me—perhaps the final one
among a hundred final ones.
In that moment I swore I was done writing
my story in vanishing ink.