I should have taken a left at Albuquerque.

I lay beneath the stars near the Rio Grande,
Counting regrets like coins dropped in the sand.
A man of motion, hitching truth to roads,
Chasing the idea of home, not the house.
From Texas Route 90 I watched the border extend
The sky a velvet vault that held no lies.

Funny how silence sometimes tells the best lies—
So, I listened closely near the Rio Grande.
That night I almost stopped—almost reached a spell
Where longing ceased and time became just sand.
But morning broke, and the man rolled from that house
Of stars and shadows back onto the roads.

El Paso dropped beneath the horizon in my rearview,
Roads that forked north with new truth or old lies.
Interstate 25 led away from the house
I never built, backtracking the Rio Grande.
Albuquerque offered a choice carved in sand:
Go left—back to dreams—or right to the expanse,

Of Florida’s beaches, where memory might spread
Across days filled with dancing and roads
That led to parties, tan lines, and sand
Too warm for a man still tangled in lies.
But I chased youth away from the Rio Grande,
Choosing the idea of love over building a house.

So I made lovers out of seasons
and aged like driftwood on that endless span.
No desert peace like the Rio Grande,
Just traffic and retirees clogging the roads.
The beaches mocked with sunlit lies,
As salt crusted memories in the sand.

Now I carve my name into Californian sand,
Dreaming of juniper, of silence, of a house
Where turning left wouldn’t have led to lies.
Where a better life waited just past the
New Mexican hills, instead of those roads
I took away from the Rio Grande.

The roads now whisper like the Rio Grande,
That stretch between sand and the dream of a house,
Where even lies become truth and truth becomes lies.