Jet Lag
by Lori Hershberger
At 4:00 AM when I am not there,
I look at the maps again,
at the blue lines of roads
that tangle through the province,
the curves, the cliffs, the paths
that weave through the forests
and mountains of Mae Hong Son.
But maps do not show the lines those roads
have etched inside me, the way my veins
throb through me, blue and yearning.
I have become the soft map of each kilometer
flung from mountain to hill to cliff to valley.
I carry you inside me, every dusty road,
every lonely forest, every solitary peak
traced upon the map of my body,
alive and sleepless on the other side of the world.
Lori Hershberger lives in Mae Hong Son Province, Thailand, where she teaches EFL and dreams of traveling across the Salawin River into Burma. You can find her book, Dustbeams, on Amazon.
Photography by Kenneth Godoy