print previewback CHLOE HONUM
Stopping at a Gas Station on the Third Day of Driving Across the Country
after Henri Cole
When I close my eyes, I’m back in the dream, diving to the bottom
of the lake in which he loved me. When I open my eyes, it’s October
in Arkansas, in a brightly lit aisle of a Love’s gas station. I concede:
if silence is all he offers, then I am thirsty for his silence.
Outside, the air is still and cold, with mist thickening in the trees.
Pumping gas, feeling the handle pulse—who was he that even now
his silence gives the note I tune my voice to? Trucks shudder
right through it, then clouds come low, tasseled with blackbirds. 
Love Is a Wound that Will Happen
Stopping at a Gas Station on the Third Day of Driving Across the Country