Quiet Out

This girl never really wanted
to be a runaway. There went
star-studded boots
with a moonshoe print,
hot tar mottled to catch up.
Her dad drove by her at 5 miles
an hour, hovering on brake,
Skyline all the way down
the summer street. Your mom 
is worried. I know—she's still
your mom. She wanted
to stumble to those long arms
keeping her company.
She held out for a while
and slid back thanks
softened with "I would never
really leave you."

When he died, first
hot-tar rain of the year,
she was dropped off
into a plate of neighbor's
spaghetti sliding out the tines
because the sauce was all water.
When did her fingers stop
shaking up gravity—to push
her tongue in, swallow
down low-air conditions?

Tracks to the horizon both ways.
That iron oxide rubbed silver,
line after line, ping after cling
to what you know, girl.
The trains could move faster
than heaven's freeways,
yellow lines behind the dust-
smudged Milky Way
all in the rear-view.