I was in Missouri when it hit me; I actually did it!
Boy, was I scared.
I said I would go out West for a week on my own. I had the
vacation time, and nobody seemed to need me for the week at work. So, I packed
a week’s worth of underwear, jeans, shirts, and music, thrilled at the thought
of being independent. I brought so much great music! Fun drive from Indy to
Missouri, singing along and stopping whenever I felt the urge…to eat whatever
and with little guilt. Sure, the traffic was starting to get a little scary in
the hills. Trucks speeding, mostly, just freaked me out. I had to get through
this state as fast as possible. Onto Kansas, I thought. No hills and less
traffic... just one straight line of highway to Colorado.
But I nearly went off the road while driving through Kansas,
because there were no hills and no traffic, and the road went on forever! Actually,
I really did go off the road. Not that anyone was around to see it! I made sure
to stop at every gas station to get more coffee and to use the restroom,
frequently…just to keep awake, really…just to walk around for a few minutes
until my senses came back to my head.
I hated Kansas, because I felt like I
could never leave it.
Colorado was reached; but even Colorado felt like Kansas for
a long, long tread until that strange, gray horizon grew darker and finally became the Rocky Mountains!
--------------------
The Ozarks convinced him that he was nowhere near his recent
past. He was on his own, in his red Chevy, with his music, and his off-key
singing. He was scared, suddenly, when a semi passed him too quickly just as he
had gotten into the hills. This was too real, and too dangerous. What if he
wrecked?
He had hoped Kansas would give him some rest. The state was
predictable and bare; no surprises there, in Kansas… Only skinny mile markers every so often reminding him of where he was; where he was not. As the day crept
to noon, and deep within a hundred miles of Kansas DNA, he no longer felt safe in
the opening Plains. Kansas was consuming, perpetual; a time-warping Tera firma.
Who would miss him? That’s all it was. Medication. This trip…
He knew it. So, too, Kansas.
No escaping Kansas. Miles and miles of him. Kansas was like…stretched
out over the earth; his thick belly both a hard and leathery youthful landscape of know thyself and screw the world. Kansas's treasure trail fastened down the passing of time as Kansas drew his strength from the heat of the
day, yet cooled the friction of his man’s wheels. Kansas would only let go of
him if he promised to lay down across his prairie chest, plunge into the new sweat
of a forever kind of tone, smooth down the beard that burned from the aftershaved neck, and roll over, roll out, and roll down the trenches of starved lips until his man succumbed and fell, head first, into the dark eyes and hazel pools of Kansas.
And jealous was Kansas; for when the dusk exposed their bodies to the
vacuum, Kansas would drive his man off the ridge in the melody of poems whispered into his man’s ear, promising vastness to roll and roam all day while gracing his man with protected sleep in pillowed arms of washes and ridges; as they look up at the vacuum and dream...if his man would just stay...then so, too, Kansas.
He loved Kansas, because
Kansas promised to linger.
Yet, late into the night, while Kansas rolled over to his East when a new traveler broke into his borders, the Wise Men to the
West, from behind great green gates, roused the man from his Kansas dream; called
the man to his safety from his Kansas play; promised the man a color beyond his
Kansas gold; snuffed the man of his intoxicating Kansas kiss; let the sting and locked the caffeine and eased the swell of his Kansas gas station coffee.
Ex-lover Kansas. An eternity of bliss lost to The
Rockies.
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