We’d been driving two days now
Past fading snow and frozen lakes
Red earth and grain elevators
Broken homes and empty lands
Approaching Texas oil

Somewhere north of Oklahoma City
We picked up a girl sitting at the petrol stop,
She was waiting for people like us
A girl in emerald green short cropped hair scabbed knees
Said she’d been camping in a field for days
Crawled out of her tent and danced to the early sun
until the rancher stopped her.

My first hitchhiker.

We sat three girls and one dog up front
My sister and I and the girl
The backseat held all I owned
A framed portrait of a collie on my Mothers old farm
Half used candles yard sale coffee cups winter coats I hoped I would never use again
Journals half kept and abandoned
Heartaches poured out on paper but never mended

When we finally crossed the Arizona border the next morning
We pulled over to get cold drinks, sandwiches.
The man with the long white beard was there with some kids
told us they were going to see a big crater
Somewhere off I-40
Did we want to come they asked
See an expansive hole in the earths exterior
A reminder of what is beyond our own small existence.

Sometimes we get hit
without a chance to defend ourselves