When Google Maps detoured us through the middle of nowhere in Tennessee

As we drove from Missouri back to Alabama, I almost said, "If I see one more Trail of Tears sign, I'm going to fucking cry."

But I didn't.

Most would take it as some sort of humorous hyperbole, and I suppose in most ways it kind of is. I mean, look around at this white girl, okay, life. I am tired and stressed, but it's not biblical levels. Every twenty minutes Tennessee itself seems determined to remind me of that.

The signs aren't subtle. TRAIL OF TEARS. Another one. Then another. Little roadside reminders that something happened here bad enough we've nailing explanations to the roadside two hundred years later.

And here I am, irritated at Google Maps.

The soapbox I could try to stand on is barely wide enough for one foot, and it's a little rotten. Not rotten like the floorboards of a shack without insulation, rotten from the weather coming in, but rotten like a child spoiled rotten. Actually spoiled. Horribly spoiled.

That's what I'm standing on.

But nonetheless, just like Stormi Kardashian wiping her brow, flustered, trying to move frappuccinos out the tiny, luxurious drive-thru window of her playhouse Starbucks, I am tired and worn out. I am wrung out.

And so are you. We are lost on back roads, and yet again, we pass another Trail of Tears sign.

Not the same sign, but another marker. Another place where someone thought it important to stop and say: this happened here. Right here. Along these roads and ridges and stretches of Tennessee.

Then Google Maps instructed us to continue for half a mile.

My threshold dwindles into despair as you announce you need to pee. Thank goodness, me too.

Another Trail of Tears sign.

So we stop at "Country Girls Rest Stop," where an Indian woman (from India, not Trail of Tears) sells us mozzarella sticks and chicken sandwiches and a scratch-off ticket (we won nothing) after we have used some of the dirtiest bathrooms I've been in for at least two years. I left a bloody pair of panties in the trash can, and it's okay. It's part of the fun and the journey. I was just hangry. You too.

We eat and split a Reese's Cup and continue on. For the next five miles, you sporadically announce, "It's okay," and I follow with, "Yeah, we're okay."

And eventually, we are led to a main stretch of highway, which we will stay on for forty-three miles and cross the city limits into what we still call home, for now.

A miracle at last: I didn't cry once.

There, Too—

For all my life, and forevermore,

I will be a chickenshit motherfucker—

scared of winning and losing alike,

fearful of change and stagnation,

just scared to death until I die.

And if there's reincarnation

or some sort of afterlife,

I'd be a yellow-bellied coward

there, too.

Man vs. Bear

I know I’m a little late weighing in on this, but if I had to pick between a man and a bear, I’d actually pick the man.

Not because I trust him more than a bear, but because my husband is a huge animal lover and just couldn’t harm a bear.

But he has killed a man and would do it again for a lot less than someone fucking with me.

I think he’d even let me pick how that man dies. He says poison can be less suspicious, depending. Bullets are faster. But I don’t know—something about strangling or drowning someone to death for me just seems so romantic.

Then again, it might be more fun to make the guy dig his own grave first.

Nice to have options, though.

mosquitoes

golden rule

I believe in the Golden Rule,
but only if you go first—
treat me the way you want
to be treated before
I do a damn thing.

Burn Out

Can drinking a gallon of sweet tea be self-care? The answer might surprise you.

Actually, a lot of things can be good for you, on the right day, if you don’t look at them too closely.

Like screaming motherfucker in your car over and over.

Killing a housefly with your bare hand.

Reading a letter from a friend.

Deleting a distracting app from your phone.

Telling a coworker, for the second time this week, that the meetings are killing you.

Cutting the sleeves off a T-shirt from a place you haven’t worked at in four years.

Because maybe you’re a cutoff-sleeve tank gal now, but there’s only one way to know, and that’s to try.

Or deciding tonight is a hot-dog night and your husband can adjust.

Or not starting a fight by saying, “Just a reminder: you can cook too.”

Sometimes self-care is swallowing the mean little sentence whole.

Because he can,

and he could,

and he sometimes does.

Letting inside thoughts stay inside. Not airing every feeling the second it arrives. Trying anger or disgust on in different sizes before committing to one, if at all.

There are a million ways to keep yourself from catching fire and not burning out.

Might as well try them all.

Mistaken for Play

A reminder: we can chase dragons

without needles; disappear

into holes once mistaken for play.

’Twas neither fun nor game today.

That version of me still lives

behind the Ethan Allen sofa

without a cushion cover,

twelve years old and capable, briefly,

of empathy, sympathy, kinship—

god-awful hours in digital depths

we are warned of yet never heed.

God damn how that spirit gripped my wrist,

wrestled me to the dirty floor, dog hair

matted into the shag, and as an adult

I can still be there

when everyone else is dead.