The car keys on the counter
signal the possibility of leaving
but this time we will sit and stare
at one another in the full daylight.
The sink drips and the linoleum
hasn’t been scrubbed and sometimes
the house picks up dust
that won’t be cared about until
new owners come and click their
tongues and wonder at the previous others.
Such is life.
So, sitting we observe the last curves
of each face; the last stretch of each arm and leg
the last tone in the last note of each other’s breathing
and there is regret, always, at losing someone.
This regret is a whole hillside
a long plain partitioned by rusting wire.
whose land is whose now,
so many years after the homestead.
Each space is a potential kingdom
until we finally abandon the well-digging.
dried, ended, a reverse migration.
Somewhere in American history
it was decided that the frontier would close
when there was no more land and we,
the people, press up against one another
and twist inward searching.
The new exploration is a pilgrimage
into ourselves and companionless
we fear starvation and disease.
There must be one more place
just one more stretch of prairie
one last island
somewhere.
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