Grid Lines

The plexiglass is scratched by a thousand sandy winds,

and the person in 12B is heavy on my arm.

Beneath us, the long straight road begins and ends

between a cluster of silos and a weathered farm.

It’s a quilt of brown and green, stitched by a fence,

a geometry of lives I will never have to meet.

The scale of the distance makes a strange kind of sense

when you’re looking at the world from a narrow seat.

We call it empty because we’re moving way too fast

to see the dust on the porch or the paint on the gate.

Just a blur of a history that wasn't built to last,

a quiet, square garden in a flyover state.