tile floor, cream counter, random boy at 1:30 a.m.,
she curses the newest hangnails around her worn fingers
sliding down between the cement cracks; and he says
"you're in so-and-so, my name is such-and-such"
no i don't know your face at all, i don't know much.

cause that boy he got eyes as dark as the night sky
and i-
i just can't see myself swallowing anything less sweet
than the lies he feeds me. this is the taste of defeat.
i drove into him, i'm telling you, i drove for hours and miles until the night was all that was left,
but still, i never crossed the depth of his stare-
oh i never made it into that space where he keeps
the secrets he refuses to share.

"i think you're sad tonight, but it's impossible
to truly know what another can feel"
So I said "I survived a robbery
at the edge of sharp steel."
He held the point to my chest and asked
why I always sink when I could just swim,
then I felt
every
single
millimeter
as he pushed it in.

She curses Eros and his fucking arrow,
the streak of streetlights, a boy with a toxic glow.
everything is blending into everything else,
and now this all-night gas station is the only place
i could think to go.
she is still me when i've crossed the state line,
we are so tired of running from headlights
all the time.

i wish i loved a boy with eyes this color brown-
i think i could trust you, but then
i also thought my own heart wouldn't let me down.
his foreign voice is the only comfort- "i can't tell you
why the stars align as they do and why
that alignment always stays the same.
but i can give you directions back home-
isn't that the only reason you came?"

i remember the last highway exit in my town, then i
remember the last one in my state.
i remember the last one remotely familiar, and
none of those that followed, so do you think
being lost is my fate?
i'll return, i'll return when the sun comes to
convince me that i can; I'll return
whenever the highway rolls me back
into the space of his tiny attention span.

I'll leave you alone now, back to the
12 song repetition in my small car.
headlights, coffee, stars, infinite loss,
and a sense that no amount of wishing on stars
could bring you back from wandering so far.

i guess i wouldn't hate myself so much if i didn't think
that most nights you'd prefer i just kept driving.
and maybe i will.
until the stars become me and the pavement stops me
and everything slows to silent and still.
the highway alone
knows just what we've been through
and i'd give it all away
just to have somewhere to go to...

(2003)