Page 158 of Wayfarers

pantry filled with macrobiotic joyless snacks

and The Strategist’s Most Recommended

Camping Gear and I said a punctilious

goodbye to my mom, Botox stone-faced

and weeping tasteful tears, and I drove

hundreds of joyless miles to find myself

alone, just me and my deficiencies, me

and my dog, me nowhere near as helpless

and alone as Cal sprawled out on the ground,

arm flung up, all over blood—but I was trying

to get there. I wanted to be that helpless, that alone.

If I stumbled into happiness somehow

by Knox’s side—wild in the sun, talking all night,

walking the siloed palaces of madmen, together

unspooling all the lies of I’m perfectly fine,

gorgeous boy beside me who listens,

who thinks, who has so many reasons

to hate the world and who loves it anyway—

if that joy allowed me in, after what I’d done,

it was only to teach me how little I deserved it

before it cast me out on the side of the road.

Didn’t leave this summer in one last moonlit moment

in North Carolina, Knox’s hands in my hair.

Left this summer in a Walmart fight. Tonight I found out

the boy I loved was a liar. Found out

how much I hate that, almost as much

as I hate lying. I do it anyway, though.

Have I learned my lesson? I knelt

in the shards of my broken headlight

to hold Cal’s trembling hand. But I don’t want to live there