My toenails are too long. The hack job I gave myself the last time I cut them is apparent in the sharp blue-white 160 lumens headlamp light swinging from the fabric loop I tied it too inside this tent. The python snake tattoo that wraps around my ankle is getting fuzzy-edged: the colored ink my ex-smack-addicted friend drilled into my flesh too deeply are finally fading, after some 20-odd years. I still have scars from where the ink forced its way to the surface, rejected by my own antibodies, causing an infection that lasted two weeks, cured by antibiotics with a metallic taste that still rises at the back of my throat when I let myself think about it for long enough. I could have lost my foot.
The fire I built in the Texas-state-park-sanctioned steel pit is still burning, softly. The smoke has penetrated my clothes and I’ll smell like wood fire ashes tomorrow. But I don’t mind.
Today I cut myself loose from the little gray room that traps me in my dreams. I have no capacity for heartaches, so I used this dull, rusty pocketknife dug from the depths of my toolkit. Too much, too soon, too fast… not enough.
Over 200 miles of straight shot 75-mph freeway, I wear a sharp edged, flat contact patch onto the knobs of my tires, blasting out to where the pavement transforms into to gentle curves, and the steamy concrete covered swamp that is Houston gives way to scrub brush, prickly pear and rocky dust. The sunsets are bigger here. The light bleeds into the horizon, stinging my retinas and staining them red.
Trump/Pence signs dot the landscape, hanging from barbed wire fences. The last gas station sold life-sized dolls, cowhide coasters and crosses made of plastic bullets spray-painted in gold, as well as the gas and bottled water I gratefully bought. 16-oz cans of watery domestic beer winked at me, glistening from bathtub-sized bins filled with ice.
In the dirt I observe dung beetles shoving heavy loads. Their little balls of shit are bigger than they are… but they are determined. Across the way I hear the twangs of an autoharp. There’s a voice behind it, one I heard speaking of Armageddon and Walmart rebates only 15 minutes ago.
Strum, good lady… strum…