Clean: An Anthology

Winding Roads, Part One

i left myself at o'hare international airport
two thanksgivings ago, in a haze of rain and fog and mountains,
suitcases and bags clicking along worn, grooved floors
a metronome of keeping the time of my descent.
it is loud, rhythmic, pulsing, everywhere at once.
a cosmopolitan dream and an effortless disappearance

it had been five months since we were last there,
among rebel flags and winding roads.
this was the intermediate step, you could say
the paper-thin line between mountains and skyscrapers,
all-american coal mines and diamond-paved streets.
between the land that time forgot and the land that time reclaimed.

and i remember it like it was yesterday even now,
how i did my own disappearing that week.
and how i blamed it on everything else,
as if there was a shame to admitting you were blinded by a fog.

that was the point of no return, of course
a hell that swept me away and dropped me into the emerald fog
where i would claw to emerge from months later.
the week where i surrendered to the quiet violence of my brain

i said it was the fresh, stangely clean west virginia air,
or the fact that old age and weariness
made my family into dominos as i spoke.
they were falling down onto front porch swings
and drinking their last cups of coffee.

but the truth was, a war had begun in my mind,
an insurgence making its way through streets and neurons and chemicals,
and there was nothing i could do to stop it.