What I Will Say When They Ask Chris Mink When you return you will count the last one hundred miles home as you have always done. You will call and text all of those still here, and you will play the songs that remind you of her and of him and you will desire something fried, and you will smile the way you smile when you are certain no one can see, and yes, you will do the same things, and yes, those same jokes are still funny, and yes, those two are still fucking, and no, you will not believe it. You will not wipe this place off your hands with a napkin because you will lick it from your fingertips so that everyone may hear, or you will sop it up with white bread because all we have is white bread. Yes we still drink the same booze. Yes you would like something different, something with citrus that reminds you of high school and you will tell us that story again and we will laugh and love you, and yes, we would like another. We will always want another. * Tuscaloosa is gas station wine and pine cone fights and homemade biscuits and cockroaches the size of red wagons and a thousand women you want to sleep with and a thousand men you don’t. It smells like autumn and sheet metal and smoking meat and exhaust from a truck you need a ladder to step into and a Crown Vic on twenty-fours with all the metallic the world ever intended painted just on the hood and red eye gravy. It tastes like black eyes that are really purple and gold teeth that are really gold, honeysuckle and mosquito
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