“Southbound on 83”

I’ve seen the white bus.
Not a school bus.
Not a church van.
A ghost—rolling bones and orange jumpsuits—
southbound on Highway 83
like it’s dragging the weight of a broken country
behind it.

They call it “transport.”
Like it’s just movement.
Like it doesn’t smell like
bleach and piss and panic.
Like it doesn’t hold
a mother’s scream pressed against steel.
Like it’s not a coffin on wheels
with a heartbeat you can’t hear.

I saw it once at a rest stop—
all tinted windows and chainlink daydreams.
A woman inside mouthed
“Tell my babies I’m okay”
but the glass didn’t translate grief.

That highway knows her name.
Knows how she once danced
barefoot in the rain
before the needle
before the man
before the court that forgot
she was a child once.

Highway 83 stretches like

a judgment without mercy—
north to courtrooms,
south to cinderblock silence.
No exits.
Only destinations
that forget redemption.

Some of the women on that bus
never learned how to cry
without flinching first.
Some still braid their daughter’s hair
in their minds
each morning.
Some wrote poetry in GED notebooks
about stars they can’t see anymore
because the windows don’t open.

I want to set fire to that bus.
Not with rage—
but with resurrection.
Make it a lantern,
not a cage.
Paint it with every name
they tried to erase.

Because these roads were never meant
to lead to ruin.
Because justice
shouldn’t arrive in shackles.
Because a body
in a state jumpsuit
is still a body made of stardust
and forgiveness.

So when you see that bus—
white, worn, weeping—
don’t look away.
Pray with your headlights.
Scream with your silence.
Because someone’s whole life
is riding
in the back of that steel-bellied beast
and they still believe
there’s a road home.