The tire shop in Camden still spells my last name wrong, like it’s never met me long enough to care. I stop there anyway for air that costs a dollar bill, and a man who talks like he’s already halfway elsewhere. (yeah…) A barn leans sideways like it’s listening to the wind, paint peeled off in sentences I never learned to read. I wipe the windshield with a gas station paper towel and watch my past dissolve into the weeds. (mm-hm) There’s a red clay cut where the highway loses patience, grinding straight through what used to be somebody’s field. A billboard frame with nothing left but bolt holes points at nothing it was ever meant to reveal. (nothing there) A feed store radio arguing with static weather, someone laughing like they forgot the joke was cruel. I write my mileage on a coffee cup lid and throw it into a trash can full of names I used to use. (gone) Mile markers don’t count people, they just measure what got gone. Every town I don’t stay in keeps proving I was wrong. (keep rollin’) If I ever slow down long enough for the road to say my name, I might not recognize the answer… so I keep driving just the same. (just the same…) A school bus idles like it’s thinking about quitting, kids pressing fingerprints into fogged-up glass. The driver nods like he’s done this a thousand winters and none of them agreed to last. (mm) There’s a bait shop cooler humming under fluorescent flicker, selling worms and soda to men who don’t look up. I used to know which direction meant “somewhere better,” now I just follow whatever burns less fuel up. (yeah… yeah) Mile markers don’t count people, they just measure what got gone. Every town I don’t stay in keeps proving I was wrong. (wrong…) If I ever slow down long enough for the road to say my name, I might not recognize the answer… so I keep driving just the same. (keep drivin’) At some point the map stops arguing with itself, and everything becomes the same kind of straight. (shhh…) Mile markers don’t count people, they just watch them disappear. Every place I thought would fix me never wanted me near. (nowhere near) If I ever turn this engine off and let the county line win, I’ll find out if a man can stay where he’s always been. (…still there)
