on the way out

I think I’ll cry on the way out.
Today the heat is electric,

an acid on the bones 

as the hours climb higher into the sky. 

The blue is hot 

against the back of my eyes, 

no breeze 

as I lay myself down into the grass, 

green enough after the rain 

as if it could swallow me whole.
I am hoping it will 

before the end of my time here.
I am watching everything, 

as if by doing so I can imprint 

the curve of the road into me, 

the lines of the sidewalk, 

the brick of the buildings 

along my route home as I bike the hills, 

breath panting, skin boiling, heart beating 

along the edge of my mouth while I try to breathe. 

I am trying to breathe.
As if I can cage it all into my body, 

smear this feeling across my face, 

down my neck 

until the blood of it all reaches my heart. 

For there are only so many 

moments left, the beat 

of this pulse against me, 

counting down each second 

until I am gone.
I am finally leaving.
But this was a long time coming.
And I do not know how 

to express it anymore, 

as if I could have tried, 

written the cracks of my history 

out across my body, stretching 

the blades of my shoulders down 

into the page beneath the burn of the sun 

as I light my pale skin on fire. 

This is everything in these moments, 

the flight down the hills, 

the turn in the roads, 

the pale lights of the streets 

in the warm silence of the evening.
I have existed here. Broken 

my heart against a boy who did not know, 

shredded my mind to academics, 

pitched my body forward 

against the asphalt, cut the lines 

of language and isolation along my skin,

fallen in love with her as we laughed 

our way past midnight. 

I am familiar 

with the taste of the air, 

the feeling of desperation in the night 

as the semis roam the highway, 

the isolation a fever across my skin 

even as I stretch out my arms 

and encompass the whole of this town.

But in the end there is no choice but to go. 

For everything is now ending.