Quinn Carver Johnson lives and writes in Conway, Arkansas.

“You can see a million miles tonight,
but you can’t get very far.”
—Counting Crows

Skyline Drive // Conway, Arkansas
By Quinn Carver Johnson

Somewhere in Arkansas right now
there is a field, empty in these winter
months, covered by a thin sheet
of water (melted snow perhaps) and
the 4:37 p.m. sun, now mostly           invisible,
is burning a thin line of orange ember
into the edge of the clouds (like
so many burnt letters) and
that thin sheet of fallen sky
has become a mirror. Reflecting
the atmosphere it was once                a part of.

I have often felt most at home
in the places I have left behind,
in the parts of the world I have
tumbled out of and fallen,
unwelcomed, onto ground
I’ve never felt before, on to
dirt I was not fashioned from.

I used to live in awe of flatland,
the way Kansas and Oklahoma stretch
themselves like a sheet pulled
tight over my mattress, the way
I could throw my gaze and
let it fly for miles and miles before
it ever touched down, the way
I could see tomorrow coming
on one horizon before today
had even dipped behind the other,

until someone lifted their finger
to the sky, aimed it at a luminous orb
and asked, How far away
do you think that is?

and, suddenly, the world
that had once made me feel
so small

felt miniscule itself and
I stopped looking up
when I walked and
I left the curtains closed
in the mornings and
I never went stargazing
with that one girl
ever again and I refused
to tell her why and I sat
in my car and cried

and,
then,

I finally put the keys
in the ignition and drove
into the mountains
where I could never see
more than twenty feet
in front of me and
I didn’t feel at home
anymore.