Greyhound 1AM
Megan Mauro
“No one gets out of here alive!”
he’s saying to his friend or
an unimpressed stranger. Stale air
and the jaw-clenching delay
and the landscape rushing by like an
afterthought. And it’s hilarious to think
that he means here, as in
this Greyhound bus, as in this plush
out of date seat, as in this space
on the highway in the middle
of a middle. And he’s saying it to no one,
really, but you can tell that he needs to.
Needs to account for his jowls, his
slack-jawed stare, needs to say it
before someone else does—how
profoundly I will continue to
disappoint myself. I did none of the things
that I meant.
Charon of the Greyhound, may they pay you
in years. May your audience be rapt.
Teach us how not to get out of here alive,
how to contain both beginning and end
and say it so no one can argue with you.
For my part, I am still trying to figure out
where here is. Still trying to navigate this
artificial blue glow, this solidarity of strangers
going anywhere together
in the middle of the night.
Megan Mauro is a recent college grad floating through space waiting for something exciting to happen. She's a poet, caffeine aficionado, and firm believer in the Oxford comma. She has a lifetime love of people-watching and a guilty pleasure of writing greeting cards.