in the early morning light
while balancing
on a telephone wire?

The road ends
when the pavement
meets gravel.

Dust kicks up and fills my lungs.

You come home to lie
in the living room.

The inescapable angles
of your assembled hospital
cot scrape my shins.

I kneel to slip socks
over your swollen ankles
the same way you once tied my shoes.

The wind is charmed
with saccharine,
sun-bleached soybeans,

and the red and white
striped awning
of the Dairy King is unrolled.

Wings whistle like heat waves
over the lone stop light
that splinters main street
down the center.

The sounds sticky with humidity
and an unspoken fatal message.

I fall outside of the green shingles
and wooden siding and trespass
the bitter medication that plants
resentment in your chest.

The dust finally settles,
but the air is ill with silence.

Mild coos no longer decorate the plains.
The sheets have been stripped,
your cot taken apart.