by Taylor Gregory
If we leave before dawn,
we can reach the road in time
to catch the sun lifting the
veils of blurred horizons,
lighting the world in shades
of cornflower blue.
Here,
in the quiet of ourselves,
we will crane our necks from
the west and learn to notice
what lies beyond the checkered
lines of the interstate, the humdrum
of overnight trucks bound
for New Mexico, the sting of
words we should have left unsaid.
I will drive, and you,
bare feet smudging the windowpane,
will feign indifference but feel
yourself softening. Here,
the sun will peek over fields
of drought-dead cotton, filter
through tinted glass and dark
corners we kept to ourselves —
and by then, when we search for
the space where earth dissolves to sky,
we will lose the dividing line.
Here,
maybe we will find something
more than a half-hearted apology,
a quick fix, a make-up kiss
we only mean in the morning.
Maybe we will find
some version of each other
we can still love in the afternoon.
Taylor Gregory (she/her) is an MA student at Oklahoma State University. Taylor studies 20th-century British literature, Modernism, and contemporary poetry. Her current research concerns religious transformation in Modernist poetry, specifically the works of T.S. Eliot.