I survey the atlas spread across the table, 
highlighted cities mark places I’ve lived. Torture
to recall all those boxes: books, clothes, entire 
households packed and hauled down flights of stairs, 

down highways, stretching long and flat as time. 
Distance disappearing beneath quiet tires, map open 
on the seat beside me so sure of itself, indifferent 
to how long it takes to travel an inch, content 

with shrinking reality to fit in a glove compartment. 
Names roll off my tongue: Los Angeles, San Francisco, 
Seattle, Boston, and back to L.A., before Miami. 
Before that niggly thought moves in and takes

up residence: This is not where I’m meant to die. 
Always craving that elusive promise emanating 
from an open map. My rambling heart whispers,
Let’s try again, forgetting the weariness of miles,

I head down another dead-straight two-lane highway, 
aim my compass for another cartographer’s lie—
paper streets—roads planned but never built. 
Those places where GPS just gives up. A quest

for that city where I can finally sleep at night, 
get up in the morning and like what comes next. 
Where I can walk without stumbling
like my shoes are on the wrong feet.