BE Thompson

Already a little drunk and doing 70,

we were looking for the end

of the desert on unnamed roads

and every pothole felt like a coda.

Tyler lit a Marlboro red and passed it

into rotation with a bottle of Manischewitz,

a can of something hoppy, a gallon jug of water.

Life of Pablo was playing on repeat,

and we’d all just lost someone.

We pulled off, pissed

under so many stars it felt intrusive.

We must have looked

like children from across the dark,

gaping into the composure of night, feeling

in the stillness any beautiful thing

shouldn’t belong to us.

I didn’t know it yet,

but I was tired of being a man,

of these tiring little recklessnesses, of wanting.

When I woke in my bathroom,

it seemed impossible

we could have made it so far,

like acting out a memory of stranger’s life

until you mistake it for your own.