the comfort of truckstop strangers

986 Replies

i woke up with strangers on my mind.
little flashes of the features
of the people my life collided with
when i worked third shift at a truck stop
in the middle of the midwest.
strangers i adopted as familiar faces
to get me through some lonely midnights
far from the hills and hollers
of home.

like the boys from the car wash next door
who made their money scrambling over semis
with soapy rags, at top speeds,
even in the dad of winter when icicles
caked up their beards and sideburns
and their fingertips turned purple and blue.
they spent their money on lottery tickets
and Marlboro Reds and Nugget
and Mountain Dew.

Or the middle-aged waitress with sad eyes
who came in like clock-work for a thirty pack of Busch
and a half pint of Tvarsky, hundred proof.
exhausted after an evening
of attending to letcherous truckers
and stingy tourists just passing through.
she counted out dingy dollar bills from her apron
and even her teased up hair had fallen, wilted,
given up.

and the broad-shouldered, big-bellied pig farmer
who ushered in the dawn
with a load of squealing hogs, doomed
and stacked three deep in a shiny, silver trailer.
he stopped to fill up the tank
on the way to the slaughter.
his leather face was smattered with grime
and laugh lines and grimaces,
spread out in equal parts
adn he grumbled if my timing was off
and his coffee wasn’t fresh enough.

but i’ll never forget the night
a girl i went to high school with
walked through the grimey, double doors.
she was great big pregnant
and on the arm of a truck drivin’ husband
and we both stopped to take stock
of a sign from the homestead,
incredulous that East Kentucky could appear
out of the corn fields
off the highway.

986 thoughts on “the comfort of truckstop strangers”

  1. Gaby Bedetti

    Gosh, Misty, I loved the poem’s cameos of the “strangers.” To read the last stanza about your former classmate who was “great big pregnant” was astonishing.

    Reply ↓
    1. Misty Skaggs

      thanks so much, Gaby! the truckstop world was definitely one of the most interesting chapters in my life thus far. i met all sorts of fascinating “strangers”. it’s a weird, underground, culture all its own.

      Reply ↓
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