Oregon Trail

For my great aunt & Jonathan Hicks my first venture west was in Windows 98 or Independence, Missouri. class in the computer lab & we were supposed to be playing some typing game or another. the one i remember had a haunted theme. ghosts instructing us on the finer points of where to put our fingers. these were the last days before keyboards as appendage, when typing was not nature. i should’ve been letting an apparition coach me through QWERTY but rather i was at the general store deciding between ammo & axles, considering the merits of being a banker or carpenter. too young to know what profession would get me to the Willamette Valley in the space of a 40-minute period. i aimed my rifle with the arrow keys, tapped the space bar with a prayer for meat to haul back to the wagon. this game came difficult as breathing underwater after trying to ford a river. i was no good at survival. somebody always fell ill or out into the river. each new day scurvy or a raid was the fate of a character named for my crush or my baby sister. this loss i know, how to measure what it means to die premature before a school period ends. i can’t understand the game coming to a late end. an elderly daughter grieving her elderly mother. reading the expansive obit in a suburban Detroit church is a confusing newness. when the old do the thing the world expects i retreat into my former self. focus on beating video games I’ve always sucked at, brush up on Chicago Bulls history, re-memorize the Backstreet Boys catalog, push away whatever woman is foolhardy enough to be on any road with me. i pioneer my way away from all the known world. i look at homicide rates & wish we all expired the way i know best. i pray for a senseless, poetic departure. i pray for my family to not be around to miss me while i’m still here. i want a short obituary, a life brief & unfulfilled, the introductory melody before a beat’s crescendo into song, the game over somewhere in the Great Plains. i want to spare my descendants the confusion of watching a flame flicker slow. keep them from being at a funeral thumbing the faded family pictures like worn keys, observing the journey done, the game won, the west conquered.