drive us home

drive us home.
the tide is coming in again.
the sky bruises from
your body smacking up
against hers
in your uncontrollable
attempts at flight.
you were trying
to shatter a hole
through the sky to let
the stars in. 
they swarm like gnats 
buzzing against the flushed
face of a lamp bulb on the porch.
i drive home at dusk because
i like to watch the way 
the land changes in the dark &
how august grows out everywhere
to take you in--
you get to feel like a blood
vessel or a jupiter beetle.
whatever happened to all the lightning
bugs?-- i ask to no one 
from behind the wheel of my car.
i remember them as i'm 
bat by corn husk eye-lashes 
-- their bodies whipping 
under a trance
from the moon.
she's growing fuller
with each headlight philosopher
who pauses to think about how
much their bodies have changed.
we become part of 
the rising of tides of corn.
we're lost but we don't know it yet
because of how much different the road
looks at night with the shadows 
loaning their bodies to 
everyone's ghosts.
i want to be smaller & wet
from a shower--
pretending i just stepped out
from the rain forest--
i want my father to hold
me in a towel like a bruised
plum-- i pull leeches
out from under my eyes & my
skin is left the color
of the last notes of sunset--
we've written so many poems about
dusk that it almost felt futile
for me to try to tell you
about how the drive home feels
sometimes-- especially
when your car grows a sail & the 
tides rise under the glow
of the occasional porch light--
we're nothing really.
we're a collage of memories about
falling asleep in a passenger seat
& trying not to let the waves 
sweep us under & into the soft
wet soil--
i want to be peeled open
like an ear of corn--
yellow & white & listening 
for the wind to teach the fields
to hush--
i spend the whole drive wanting to just
pull over--
i don't know what i would do once
i was pulled over but
maybe i could run my thumb over
the bruised forehead of the coming night
sky-- 
pluck out a few stars like blueberries.
i'll keep them in my pockets 
 &
promise to give them back someday 
on another ride home when
i think too much about all
the hurt i've given the sky
to make her bruise so easily
under the weight of people
wanting
to go back to homes they no
longer have & bodies they
no longer live in--
i see her in the shadows 
off the stalks-- a small girl
as tall as an ear of corn--
i bite down & gnaw
her out of the road.
i tell her to help me
drive home without falling asleep
& she does & 
back in my room i wonder
how much of the roads we
drive are made from fragments of
our old bodies teaching us 
what it means to grow--
peeling us open & tossing away
each layer of husk until
we're naked & white &
laying face up on our beds--
body sprawled open
to catch any stars if they 
should fall-- buzzing & burned
from the scortch of the moon.