take care he said and I'll bet he never used those words before to impress, maybe to shrug off to other places with different times and new scenery and then to dazzle natives with rural tongue and fresh phrases so they would love him and his atypical voice with its typical chatter while bringing him water in small rounded plastic bottles sparkling from local mountain tops and just purchased in the soda sections of local convenience stops where he dressed hours before washing with small stolen Best Western towels and soaps wrapped in crinkled Thank You paper, wiping sleep and strain from his face with the tiny toilette, moist in its wrapper and he will thank them nonchalantly, looking into the sky to take a sip then kneeling down to turn the drum key or tighten wheels biting his bottom lip feigning a seriousness with furrowed eyebrows and they stand watching in awe of simple status, not talent because they do not know nor will they know unless his clock decides to turn to eight as mine did three hours ago and mumbles of stranger small talk, not long distance phone static, flood his hears drowning reminders that could make him grin - he has forgotten where that watch came from - that would make him grin not so much as to cause them to ask questions, but enough to know that his thoughts are elsewhere on someone else and I grin because I kissed his cheek and hung onto his hug before he left me to do what he does best but how can love sustain new addresses, tanned legs, white smiles of perfection, hill after mountain after flat winding road before straight highway? the US postal service maintains two heartbeats in 33 cent increments wrapping up a city scene or popular landmark with tales of affection between days of pavement and sleeping on the floors of strangers I love you in only weekly words, smelly stiff paper and runny ink, air of tires carrying him to places where angels reminding of life, love, sex, and perfume welcome him with open arms and he stares back - self-pity occupies the time between longing and remembering so what's a girl to do besides laugh at the laughable ramble on sentences of nonsense just like the night in the haunted woods - silent cold breeze warm hands smiling telling stories running away from ghosts and pointing to relics of broken down graves so I miss you but ill see you soon the clock seems frozen at five o'clock and his eyes smile and his mouth curves and he watches them now watching him - knowing that I care but asking himself if I would ever know and asking if he cares if I ever knew and the thought crosses his mind - out there in no-man's-land with the beautiful birds who sit and stare... unconscious all the while of me at home taking care