Instructions on How to Leave a Town

^ now you have to go back through Ohio just to manage a few sweaters because it’s getting cold out there pack two grey-green duffels / most of your clothes are torn what else                    do you have to show for yourself stay in motels     drink bourbon & cut your fingertips on the zippers of your jeans / throw the oranges at the hero ships on the walls                     forget her ^ her touch—nearly seven hundred days away / the desk littered with candles & letters / last night folk music & a light bulb     swinging     humming sink backed up & the water flooded the dirty blue tiles—you just ducked out in another town you can imagine fresh basil in the kitchen window    orange peels ground down to dust          bicycles          farmland          the peripheral at peace with the eventual ^ you could show up at someone’s door          unannounced by the wind ^ collect weeds as though they are scarce sleep next to the man who takes care of the trees          the edge is close between two bodies          smokestacks line the sky ^ troubled by your body, you’re trembling at the gas station stay in a poorly insulated farmhouse north of the city wake to a lack of rain, an unbroken sky remember the moon from last night that seemed to drift if god were uneasy you would not know