Illinois

by India LaPlace

We drove through Illinois once.
Actually, we were driving home to Utah,
From Huntsville, Alabama.
You were leaving me.
Not leaving me, really.
That wasn’t fair.
You were being deployed to South Korea.
I had to wait it out until the army said that I could come too.
I told everybody how sad I was,
How much I would miss you.
My heart was aching,
It had never felt so heavy
And I wanted to tear it out of my chest.
But it was aching because I knew I wasn’t in love
And I didn’t know how to leave.

This was real.
Legal.
And I had made a mistake when I signed those papers.

I was nearly four in the morning when we finally stopped.
The hotel was shitty,
But we were exhausted.
You always talked about how you could drive for hours on a road…