When I get to California,
I’ll pull the car off the freeway at Hilt
and scream. I swear I will. There’s nothing there
so no one will know. I’ll stand on the side of the road,

and shred my voice into wind. Ridiculous,
but I don’t care. My sister will hear me all the way
in Pennsylvania. She sleeps dose to dose now,
items on her to-do list fading

as she learns to forget. Oldest of six, she hovers
while my second sister waits—expecting her own heart
will stop as well. The third sister watches the moon,
her body igniting again and again from the pain.

She’ll hear me too. The fourth, already gone,
blue-eyed and laughing. She helped her husband die,
then her son—then she was done. It won’t be long
before I’m all alone, locked in my life

like a passenger pigeon, everyone like me gone.
I won’t go out in terror or despair, but perched
atop the back deck of a Pontiac Le Mans, top down
and barreling south toward Bakersfield—

reliving that afternoon—sister number five beside me,
still trying to outrun that wild heart, both of us
clutching the bucket seats in front of us
as we open our mouths to scream.