RoadsideAmerica.com Suggests Visiting the Ultraviolet Apocalypse

As if we don’t already glow sufficiently

beneath our own doomed star, I drive and squint to see

Indiana’s mighty rapture. Grotto of all-age

sinners brought here to luminesce their skin

beneath these crosses. One on top of the next. Like the light

of colors, radiating, circling the floor underground

at the bar years ago named 10Below, a name

I never knew meant the cold wished for

steaming into a December night—upper bar door damp

and streaked, then frozen—or the illusion of floors

under the city’s nightlife (one could dance inside it

so easily night after night as though a second sweat-soaked skin). If you let me,

above, I’ll add my X to this shrine (these visitors’ eyes

reflect to indicate death). Cross of love. There’s one way out, then nothing

but sun. Birds and trees I will not see (possibly they tell me)

to my next day. Pure Omega. The world’s aflame

outside with signs leading travelers astray: Release your mysteries,

your griefs upon these walls. If I could, I’d live among these relics, survive this

last hope for sight: pilgrim searching each corner

in barefoot pride. Find a God unmade of stone,

my mother’s fifteen-years-lost ring, any virgin to unmake

those years ago. These catastrophes: a cavern’s (but really built

three stories above) neon grace exposing a body’s

most pained curves—a fun house–mirrored room

never set to let you end. Lose time. Lose the keys to home.

Every mistaken penny for a dime. Holy water dipped

by mortal hands. Twelve hundred candles burn.

This is the end. Mary discos her stone straight