Page 141 of Wayfarers

when I’d bit off more than I could chew, I’d make myself

choke it down. But I was tired of striving. I didn’t want

to see Zion National Park anymore. I didn’t want to watch

Winslow roam the amber waves of grain,

I wanted to dump my high school boyfriend

who couldn’t get through a conversation

without “well, actually”-ing me, I wanted

to dump him for the way he ate fries. For how

he mooched off my mom. Every time

he smiled at me with the dimples I once loved

to poke with my pinkie finger, I wanted to tell him

where he could shove it. All of it petty, none of it

enough of a reason to dump him. Except

we were taking a trip I’d once thought of as mine

and he’d gotten his stink all over it. I was over it. I wanted

a summer by the park district pool daydreaming in the sun,

for once responsible to no one. Then I’d remember

how much I was throwing away. So much money, so many

hours planning the trip, hours kitting out the van,

sweat equity, the hours I spent with a table saw

teaching myself to make perfect cuts, it was too much

for me to hit the brakes. I’d become the enemy. No,

it had to be mutually assured destruction. Like:

Cal and I would drive off into the sunset

in this fifty-four-square-foot septic-smelling prison

with a golden retriever who farts when he’s sleeping

and we’d fight about where to go and who had to dump

our sewage water and who should do the cooking and for once

I wouldn’t back down and our whole relationship was contingent

on my backing down—et voilà, a few days on the road