Somewhere in Illinois
a string of billboards try to lure me
into buying a gun to defend
my home. I wonder how many
of us become our own intruders.
I stop in so many gas stations
and buy chips I don’t want.
Receipts shrivel all over the car mat.
At a restroom sink, I see a woman
who is my grandmother
until she turns around. Soon,
I will reach home and forget
my soda going flat in the car’s
cup holder. I will wash
the road’s funk from my body
until the water runs cold.
Before I get there, I will pass
three Peregrine falcons
perched on whatever scrawny,
arm-like thing reaches out
to them. I will watch
a horse trot through its barn’s
dark shadow. A cow
will fold its legs in a field.
I will imagine the laugh
the goats make when they lick
from a palm. I will miss the tire
blown to shards across the shoulder
and see a spare ushered out
to fill its place. I will cross
the state line into Indiana
and fumble for my door key
and wake in the morning
to walls I don’t know
are home until I blink.
NINA BOALS is a writer from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington, where she serves as Editor in Chief and Creative Nonfiction Editor of Indiana Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry, and it can be found or is forthcoming from Ninth Letter, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.