Wind in My Face

by Moriah Hampton

Photo Yvonne Hanson Photography

I ride my motorcycle 
through vacant foothills
my sole purpose
to ride

Curling the handlebars
I glide down two-lane roads
rounding bends 
with pop-up trees 
climbing and coasting 
along wood-crested hills
always heading just
beyond the blue bottle sky

When I am three days older
we will leave for Cherokee
I have written our trip 
in my tan leather-
bound calendar
a row of blank squares
to X through 
before the lights go out--
Is this what it means
to write the ending?

But on my bike
I ride for one afternoon 
that stretches
the rest of my life
I follow no map
but sense it 
disintegrating into 
the soil
cities  states  regions
left like dice
in the palm of a
paper-white hand

I never look back
but know 
you are not following

Lately 
you go to the garage
to visit 
the 2016 Honda CRF 250L 
you bought last summer
and smoke a cigarillo
I’m not supposed to see--
In our apartment alone
I wonder if the plans
you are making
still include me?

Soon we will leave
for another place
beyond the blue mist
hundreds of miles away.
We will depart as 
two people--
the armrest preserving
the same 
dead skin cell history 
of our entwinement
as when we arrived.