you get so scared out here alone…with each car passin’ a little bit of hope goes by…on down the road…leavin’ you behind…wonderin’…why didn’t they pick me up…what’s wrong with me…that family of four in the station wagon with New Mexico plates would’ve been perfect…I could’ve sat in the back with the dog…maybe they’d offer me sandwiches from the cooler…some kind of pimento cheese deal on white bread with a can of Faygo to wash it down with…that would’ve been nice…

there was that one woman who passed me by in the red Mazda…she was wearin’ sunglasses to hide her eyes from the sun that’s beating down…I saw her look my way…maybe she thought about it…thought about some kind of Harlequin Romance novel where the young mysterious man gets picked up by this divorced woman who left her husband ’cause she wasn’t gettin’ enough lovin’ at home…so she took off to great highways of America to find her true love…and there he was…standin’ on the side of the road wit his thumb out waitin’ on her the whole time…he was waitin’ on her specifically…he denied rides left and right until she came along…’cause he knew she was out there lookin’ for him…he’d walked for miles backwards in the hot Texas sun with pavement melting all over his cowboy boots…but…he knew she’d pick him up…he just knew it…had a gut feelin’…sometimes our guts are wrong…that woman just kept on drivin’…kept on drivin’…

hell…even the old man in the rusted out Ford pickup had left me behind…some kind of man on his way to Mexico to pick up a bride…he’d met her online and he was headin’ south to Nogales to sweep her off her feet…a young girl…barely eighteen…couldn’t speak a lick of English…he figured he needed some woman to take care of him…but…he passed me by…I would’ve listened to his bullshit for a few hundred miles…I wouldn’t mind goin’ ‘cross Arizona…he’d probably tell me stories of his old wife…how she died of cancer…right there in his arms…right after he told her he loved her…that’s probably what happened…

this heat plays tricks on you…these stories in my head keep on unfoldin’ with each car that passes by…some trucker out on 40…goin’ ‘cross America…same way I’m headin’…could it be…naw…just another passer-by…he wants to get home to his honey…don’t we all…