Knox Three A.M.
Not noise, but the absence
of it outside the skin
of my shoplifted Ozark Trail tent
snapped me awake, the way
you can see a plane against
the night sky by the black ghost
of its silhouette.
In planning my escape, I’d thought more
about the things I knew
how to do than the things I didn’t,
like sleeping alone. I stir
my ebbing fire, the embers glittering
like closing your eyes tight
and facing the sun,
the night coiled vast
and suffocating around me.
Before drifting off, I’d tried to call
to mind the Girl’s face, to
engineer some dream scenario
where we got to talk a little
longer. But that rarely works and instead
I’d been dreaming of my mamaw’s house—
its cool basement with a low
ceiling and concrete floor and the smell
of mildew, cases of Diet Coke and shelves
of canned green beans and peaches in syrup
and boxes of animal crackers. I would go
down there to read and escape
the North Carolina mountain summer heat,
which at the time I thought was awful
but now I know
isn’t anything at all. I haven’t spoken
to my mamaw in years. I hadn’t let myself
think of her in a long time. I miss her. I love
her. She loved me. I believe
she’s still alive. I want to see her again.
And that’s when I knew that I had
my destination. I’d been taught
to treat dreams as dispatches from a spirit realm.
It happened that way a lot—one of us would arrive
at the morning circle
and announce they had dreamt of palms
and waves lapping on a warm shore, and we would set
a course for Gulf Shores, or Malibu, or
Destin, to learn the dream’s meaning.
(Very rarely did it prove to be anything real.)
In the morning I’ll shower again.
Pack my things on my back
and find a way into town. Seek
a railyard and hop a freight train south.
Wind my way to Murphy, North Carolina,
and mamaw’s. I’d never traveled that way
before but we’d had people sojourn
with us who had; they told me how. And I speak
the secret language of the vagabond
fringe. I’ll figure it out.
Resolved in my new purpose,
I curl up in my thin bedroll
for a few more hours’ rest,
which I know will come at a dear
cost in the unfurling days.
As I’m crossing the threshold
of sleep, a voice, frayed from crying, calling
a name like a plea for grace
into the indigo night—calling me awake.