highway signs
by Karson Samons

my sister gets married this week and i shuffle between names i like to be called when im by myself. names that don’t carry a body. names that don’t carry a body like “arms-too-heavy” and “when-i'm-alone-i-count-how-many-times-the-sun-hits-my-neck”. names that don’t carry a body the way everything carries a body. how saltwater cradles the flesh. how asphalt carries guts. when im alone i make myself tired and reprioritize relationships. blue, purple. take yellow out of rotation. somewhere an ox pulls a plow and somewhere i sit and think about it. i close my eyes often. mondays are orange which is to say mondays push the back of knees and stomachs. mondays are orange like the way we talk lately. i say i haven’t bit my nails all month except for the jagged bit I tore off this morning and you say nice.

my sister gets married this week and i think about the “why” and the “how”. the way bodies hold and decide. time as a friend. time as a friend and no leaky blood a day a week a month. leaky blood is orange and isn’t really blood at all. rust, maybe. rust because you can only say blood so many times in one poem.

my sister gets married this week and i think about how to display a message on the electronic signs on the highway.

i picture words lonely on highway signs like:

i love you but please slow down
the moon looks nice and i wish i could see it
i can’t see your face in my mind 

i wonder who these signs are for.
i see them between closed eyes and when i look at the sun for too long. 

Karson Samons is a twenty-one year poet and multi-media artist in Tempe, Arizona. They are interested in the conversations between text and visual media, and have been published in The Lux Undergraduate Creative Review. They can be found on instagram (@karsonsamons) and twitter at @djshaggy_ (named aptly after their love for Scooby Doo).