slowly highways teach me to gnaw years off their concrete,

 

from the worn bumper stickers and yellowed life

 

lines, about fifteen feet above, watching over exit forty-five,

 

there's a pack of  brillant dandelions taunting human hands,

 

smugly taking back the earth but a few towns back I think

 

we bumped over someone else's filleted road kill, before that a half full

 

milk jug of piss, so please know that I'm not in awe of the beauty

 

I've passed through. sure, there's no glitter in the hills just eyes

 

on unattainable gold petals and a mind on a decision I almost took

 

at sixteen, the same one my mom left with when I was 13

 

and had only passed the word "suicide" a handful of times.

 

now it sees me on interstate dandelions, growing

 

oblivous to all that road speed through and crossed

 

and I might not ever know how to thank a weed. but

 

I've heard this path used to be all earth and avalanche so,

 

I hope, when I’m finally gone, after a long, long time

 

here, the earth will eat itself

 

 alive.