caught

housing a tempest in my stomach,
a tornado in my house.

I watched you whirl away Out West,
which is east from here.

dead phones don't mean dead ends,
I tell myself, sipping peppermint tea looking natural in the cafe.
My skin is slowly slipping off my bones with all the scrunching it does for you.

it's nothing.
it's fine.
it's just a delay, a vagary of modern communication,
something coming from the territory
that you spend most time in,
slipping between towns,
away and back again.