Imagine: Blue Highways

ⅰ.

Prelapsarian billy goats on blue hills,
blissfully unaware of the softened muscle in their middles chewing the dried weeds like the ticket counter at Chuck E. Cheese did with your forehead pressed up the side of the fingerprint-smudged and greased plastic cage,
watching it, awestruck, as it sucked up each ticket,
like nothing you’d ever seen before.

you imagine the creatures, the mulch shuffling down their throats,
the pricks clinging onto the pulsing pink you can almost touch the movement,
the stickiness of green and spit making delicate and slick sounds.

ⅱ.

Stucco on tar black milk with the thick layer of fat on top creaming from the mid-august heat.
casual melting debris strewn perfectly on the sides,
placed just out of the white paint boundary.

Little signs that seem small hung up so high, touching angelic wings of seagulls. your pupils rising and the eggwhite forming a sly crescent.

The blue highway’s seasalt nauseates me, and you imagine falling to your knees and your elbow jumping to shield your vision from the bitter scent.

You look out to your side, and the ocean looks like a bucket of sequins that doesn’t sparkle enough to force me to squint.

You want to be dramatic for once.

Imagine: crawling out of the open car window and bending halfway and crunching your stomach,
legs flinging frantically until they have shimmied their way out,
and getting whimsical burns on your salty skin. little blackened imprints to remind you of your days at the beach resort.

Causing enough chaos to make others jolt awake on the wheel and look behind them with confusion as they pass you.

There isn’t any space for your knees to lift up though.

ⅲ.

The wind runs through your body and flattened bugs work deep into your skin. The aftertaste feels permanent.

Small bees flit through your eyelids and their trails have been marked with little black dashes,
a trail that will surely lead to a windshield,
seeing how careless and strewn what’s left of their memory is.