You Tell Me You May not Make it Another Year

And in every strange town you drive through

there is a shape, a sound, a tremor, resembling places you've known

old men rake out their flinty dreams on scruffy patches of sky

there is always a loop in the center of all these tired souls  

says; how’d I get here

says; what happened, where is Martha, where is Fred

I tell you, dead is not dead

it is just a wandering we can’t see from here 

the long drive is a curve up and away 

a skip, a hop and we are all beat at the starting shot

what’s a year, compared to red clay roads that grow wide

and then small, the ferns dripping with rain 

look at the world just let go like that 

just look at us holding on, edging with pain

we’re not supposed to be able to imagine ourselves past a single day 

time is a lie, a story from who knows who told who knows when

if you think this life ends

I say just look again

there is a remainder that lingers 

I can taste it, these gone that I loved, that I carry 

and carry. 

James Diaz (They/Them) is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (2016, Indolent Books) and All Things Beautiful Are Bent (2021, Alien Buddha Press) as well as the founding editor of the literary arts and music magazine Anti-Heroin Chic. Their work has appeared in Cobra Milk, Rust + Moth, Yes Poetry, Resurrection Mag and Line Rider Press, among others. They currently live in upstate New York.