We are lost, he said.
He was driving us to a dinner party.
The night was still outside,
smalltown buildings flashed by.
We are lost,
the words limped over the steering wheel.
He never looked away,
as if staring at the reflection
of his words against the windshield.
We are lost,
and we couldn’t dig deep enough in our pockets
to find a compass to right the way.
We had tattered our maps to the end of the world
searching for a place to call home in each other.
We are lost, he said.
But I couldn’t let go of the beginning
when the path seemed so well-traveled,
and he thought I was something worth holding on to.
But we lost ourselves in the journey
and lost pieces of ourselves in turn.
It’s over, he said when we reached the house.
But I left the pain in the silence;
I was never good with response.
We broke up at the doorstep
and no one knew the difference.
