finding providence
forty-eight miles now separate me from Rhode Island.
routes and turn signals-
forty-eight miles of traffic and merges between me and Providence,
but it’s never far enough.
little bits of Ocean State keep crumbling into my coffee,
molecules of the “who”s and “when”s float to the surface
and leave a ring around the cup.
my mother started smoking again.
she’s lost eleven pounds already
substituting marlboro lights for meals.
i get to hear about her eating habits
and the new/old romance she’s rekindling
with her current/former cokehead boyfriend
every time she calls me to find out if and when i’ll visit her.
i swallow down my hesitance and disappointment
and it tastes like home.
i left my best friend drunk on her boyfriend’s couch in Cranston.
brenna and i promised to keep in touch this time,
but we didn’t.
just like the five other times since high school
that we swore our friendship was too important to lose.
i spent four years with her,
eating cheap chinese in the mall food court
and standing outside store 24 on Thayer Street trying to look cool.
but i left her in Rhode Island
with my ocean
and my city,
tucked under my bed in that picture i have where
her hair is bleached blonde
and i still have a natural tan.
alessio hasn’t changed and
as much as i’d like to believe that short hair
and a pair of sneakers has done him good,
it’s clear they haven’t.
he’s twice as far away from me as high school and
my own front porch
but he still likes to blame me for
every time i had a curfew or
didn’t want to run away to new york city
to become a starving artist.
we still write about each other-
i compose laundry lists of nights by the river
or sitting on the statehouse lawn
or dancing in his father’s kitchen.
he chronicles my weaknesses like a case study-
“she hated to be naked”
“aries, betrayor of trust, manipulator of honesties…”
but he never forgets meeting for the first time in a bookstore or
getting lost for hours on the way to Little Compton.
distance never really let me go:
death grips rarely come as tightly as the one Rhode Island has on me.
i can drop the accent, but i haven’t managed to let go of the mindset:
the fierce pride for a place only you’re allowed to hate.
i carry my mother, my best friend, and my tragi-comedy high school romance
in my pants pockets
along with summers at the beach
and evenings smoking cloves in the window of as220,
waiting for a slam to start,
waiting for someone else to pick me up and carry me away
from my boring black hole existence in a disappointing hometown. 60
forty-eight miles and three years
but it’s never enough.
i find i’m finding Providence in places i never thought to look
and i like to keep it there.
i loathe and love it equally
because now i know i haven’t left Rhode Island yet-
it’s not quite ready to let me go.