Iowa.

Somewhere outside Council Bluffs I start to really see. To look out the window and not at the road.

Not at the road and not at my own reflection in the rearview mirror.

I see that raspberries line the guardrail. That trees stand in shady diagonals on far off hillsides.

The sun’s bright and these dark glasses, smudged. Truckers honk at my bare legs stretched out on the dash like pale and greasy seals, sunning themselves seaside.

White windmills line the hilltops. Skeletal steel arms cutting wide swaths across blue sky.

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Sunflowers line the dividing lane

These roads are like grey rivers that cars move over as vehicular water bugs or whisked up leaves and twigs.

And if the roads resemble rivers, the corn is oceanic, rolling and dipping in waves. Settling over the landscape like a thick blanket, like a rolled out rug of yellow tipped green and gold.