How to Kill a Vagabond by Madison Farquhar

She spent the last six years traveling light 
living out of bags she could grab and take
with her any moment because chaos coursed
through her bloodstream like lightning lethal 
if she ran far enough she could leave it
behind and eventually  transitioned to those
plastic storage boxes from Walmart or Target
or Wherever but they still weren’t permanent
because she wasn’t permanent because
people weren’t permanent because she didn’t
belong to places and places didn’t belong to
her she ran away to Nevada and the desert 
held up a mirror lonely lifeless it mocked her
but became comforting so she let it crawl
inside with the adrenaline and venom and
chaos it calmed her so she tried to take some
with her—she almost said “home with her”
but she remembered a poem she wrote in
2019 she was searching for home and maybe
it wasn’t a place so much as a person or
maybe my home was just myself but
whatever it was she hadn’t found it so here
and now your name is Reno and you said
next year her name will be Reno and you
noticed she still lived out of plastic boxes so
yesterday you brought her home a dresser a
big one and told her that you wanted her to
stay

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