I soften behind the wheel ready to die in my father’s car
driving through M87, a one lane road that stretches eternal.
It’s lined with signs gradually filling the gaps of my memory.
The perfect metaphor I should’ve preserved in a poem
straight ahead. I’m faced with the good things I’ve betrayed.
They hit the windshield like tiny bugs. Their splattered bodies
something even I can’t romanticize. The archive of every dream
I lost in waking, every love letter unpursued, and every pretty line unplotted
now a passing periphery. I’m speeding with my foot off the gas.
The car pushed forward by the force of the vanishing point.
That single dot on the horizon where all converge. The sky consumed orange.
The coast a postcard view on my left-hand side. I’m drawn forward forever
as everything behind me tears away.
SHANNON PULUSAN is a writer and illustrator based in Jacksonville, Florida. For her editing process, she likes to sketch images based on the poem draft to test the clarity and vividness of her words. Illustrations help inform her writing and vice versa. She reviews poetry as an editorial assistant for Flock and writes about the magical mundane and expat life in Korea in her blog Quiet Planet. Her poetry has been featured in Hour of Writes and Asian America: The Future is Now.
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