the walk home

i need to leave
to breathe, or maybe just escape.
a single car drove us here
there is only one house to go back to.
i am suffocating in my own blood.

it’s a five-mile walk home from the restaurant,
but i attempt freedom.
my hip flexors ache by mile three.
the rain curls my flat-ironed hair
and nips at my exposed ankles
while mud cakes the sides of my sneakers.

i walk past foreign familiarities.
downtown lights glow in the wind
like fireflies my naïve hands once
yearned to grasp

something warm
to call my own.
my face stays buried in my sweater
while muscle memory carries me
through the mist.

my phone is dying,
blinking and buzzing with consequences,
but i keep playing the first
Arctic Monkeys album on repeat,
thinking how my youngest
sister listens to music i used to.

i turn the doorknob.
the warmth of the kitchen
stings my frozen fingers,
thaws the tip of my nose.
and i will keep running back
into that burning building
for as long as she must suffocate too.