New Jersey feels a lot bigger than it looks

There are miles and miles of road.
Little towns are marked only by trees
like arboreal sovereignty.
Like tiny nations inside of our garden empire,
amassed of only counties of countries.

Each song on my radio is a national anthem.
I rule the soundtrack to this
statewide continent
at the wheel of this mobile embassy,
connecting alien dynasties
in the vehicle dragging me
further from and closer to home.

There is no sea between us.
We both rest on the same shores,
but an ocean can scream for decades
stretching the space
from today to tomorrow.

Maps were once the paper lifeboats along the Atlantic
but in this modern age,
these globally positioned sherpas
fizzle in the conductive salty brine
seasoned with the sobbing testimonies
of travelers too afraid to swim alone.

So, we stick to land
lined with trees that birthed those obsolete sailboats,
following the paths dug out
by the claws of our dead sea.
The tectonic teeth of yawning miles
gnash at my landlocked toes
that no longer dance across our microcosmic continent
like they used to.
They eviscerate the tiny bodies
in my outstretched fingers
that strain to bridge the endless distance
between none
and one.

The earthquakes of Pangea's grinding jaw
shake my ballerina bones
and halt my continental convoy,
destroying my ambassadorial machine
and leaving it hungry and wanting.
This fault line keeps us further apart
than an ocean or a forest ever could.
My chewed up toes could never cross this gaping maw--

But if you called me beautiful
and called me home,
I swear I could leap across this chasm
and find asylum in you.