Phoenix night, passing through
I came down into Phoenix with a bad taste in my mouth and too much time behind my eyes,
sunburnt days stuck to me, all the wrong turns still talking,
every face I should’ve left sooner hanging on like heat that won’t lift
and the town lay flat and wide and endless in its own tired way,
streets going nowhere important,
people settling into something I could already feel closing in
I walked it off
past dim motels and neon buzzing like it had something to prove,
thinking maybe this was it, maybe I’d run myself into a corner at last
angry for no clean reason
regret hitting in waves I couldn’t outrun this time
but then the night opened
and I mean opened
sky stretched out so big it swallowed the whole mess of it,
stars thrown wild across it, careless and burning,
not waiting for anybody to understand
and standing there I got it
not in words, not in some grand revelation,
just the quiet hit of it settling right
I was never meant to stay anywhere like this
not in places that fold in on themselves
not in lives that stop moving and call it peace
I’m only passing through
same as the light cutting across that sky
there, then gone, no apology for it
and whatever they choose to be,
whatever they hold onto,
that’s theirs
but me
I’ll be out of here before the morning even knows I was around
Phoenix just another night
another stretch of road already behind me
Bleu de minuit 