Jessica DeWent

Road Trip

You brushed off
my freckles
and held them
in the palm
of your hand,
and rearranged them
on my forearm, mapping
every place
we had whispered about
visiting but hadn't—
that new job,
the mortgage—
the Alamo, Sumter,
Savannah,
and the
veins of ancient
blackwater rivers,
Edisto, Waccamaw.

In the car, somewhere in Tennessee,
you study my arm-map,
creating freckle-highways
that run wild over this
great land.
And we are
—always—
as this: making our way
between the only two real things,
Biloxi and Asheville,
life and death,
and for years
we forget
there has ever been
an atlas.

Jessica DeWent holds a BA in Creative Writing from Grand Valley State University. Currently she works for a fair trade company writing about and researching art from third world countries. contact