Hitch a Trailer

Hitch a Trailer

I miss you, small town boys. I miss your slang and your clannishness, your buddy jokes and the mild xenophobia that results from your overdeveloped sense of belonging. 

I miss the ritual of you, your quietness before my beauty, your calloused hands on my shoulders, the thickness of your arms around me. 

I miss your dust and boot leather, your thick canvas and industrial fasteners, the smell of the beer store and the clink of the bottles, your trucks that smell like hay bales, your collars that smell exactly like men. 

I miss how bewildered and newborn you look in a suit and a haircut. I miss your rough chins. I miss your casual speech, your muttered humor, and how you never know quite what to make of me. 

I miss being a spectacle to you, being with you and apart from you at once. My vocabulary, my obscure music, my overdeveloped sense of irony - whole big chunks of me vanish around you small town boys. 

I miss the confident way you swing open gates, carry large pieces of wood, hitch a trailer, pop open the hood for a look. 

And when you pull up the long lane home and swing your boots down to the dusty gravel, I am jealous of the big dog who ambles up to you, the big dog you touch like an old friend.