For some time my mother suffered vertigo
while I swept things beneath the mountains.
She’d visit me in the summers.
She’d fly halfway across the country
just to cook me breakfast.
I made lists of everything I could:
The past stations that still flicker on the radio.
The hearts I’ve unhollowed.
The names I knew forming stones below the water.
She’d bring me shirts from back east.
We’d walk beside famous western rivers.
I’ll tell you now, I don’t know how to live
everywhere I am wanted.
When I pick up the phone to tell her anything,
the wind blows between each ring.
Travis Truax grew up in Virginia and Oklahoma and spent most of his twenties working in various national parks out west. A graduate of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Quarterly West, Bird's Thumb, The Pinch, Colorado Review and Phoebe. He lives in Bozeman, Montana