New Mexico

The road was dust before it was stone,

before it was oil-slick and humming beneath headlights,

before it was anything at all.

At the edge of town, a Texico in New Mexico,

half-lit sign shaking in the wind,

letters burned out like missing teeth.

A man leans against the pump,

watching the night pour itself into the empty horizon.

He doesn’t move. Neither do you.

Somewhere between the past and the present,

between leaving and staying,

between the station and the open road,

something waits.

A miniature man stands on the curb,

no taller than a matchstick,

hat tipped low, hands in his pockets,

listening to the murmurs of the cracked pavement

as if it still remembers every footstep.

Inside, the clerk counts the till,

eyes glazed in fluorescent hum.

Outside, the man by the pump exhales smoke,

his breath curling into the dark

like a question never asked.

I find clarity.