with my daughter & her husband
& this is my 1st time camping
& my 1st festival
& we drove 15 hours to get here on Wednesday & I am pretending
to not mind beef jerky, tuna packets, rice cakes,
Manwipes, no mirrors, torrential rain,
EDM, wet lawn chairs, leaky tents,
being 25 years older than everyone here,
heat exhaustion, no Starbucks & sugar ants.
& the only band I know on tonight’s line up is Megadeth
& I have 2 weeks of unwatched Love Island episodes
& WW3 has probably started
& my gel nails are shot
& I wonder if I’ll survive to 12AM
& I’m sick of standing
& I am still wearing my light-up rave hat with sprouts
& I’m trying to be cool
& I am a half a rosé BotoBox deep
when an Instagram post tells us
the festival is cancelled
& we have to evacuate the farm
& as people start to pack up around us,
my daughter decides we should leave
in the morning as I try to book a room
at the Marriott in Downtown Gatlinburg
& everyone else is shouting
Time to move the party to Nashville
& I am too tired to cry
& I need to pee
& people are still wishing me a Happy Roo
& a girl gives me a plastic ring with roses,
starts singing at the top of her lungs:
Chill out, whatcha yellin’ for
Lay back, its all been done before
And if you could only let it be
you will see
& the porto potties are already piled high
& my daughter confirms she has never seen them so rank
& one of my Birkenstocks gets stuck in what I hope is mud
& I seriously contemplate leaving
it & I’m bummed I won’t get to see Avril Lavigne
& it’s getting dark
& the fairy lights just aren’t enough
& my battery is at 3 percent
& someone casually OD’s on our Dodge mini van
& no one can summon a medic
& we learn Live Nation sent them & security home
& I’m thankful to have not watched that Astroworld documentary on Netflix
& that I don’t know cops found a pipe bomb
& weapons in some guy’s tent on Thursday.
& I discover I have no phone service
& my daughter is somewhere blissfully unconcerned
at a pop up show in Center Roo
& the girl next to us flew in from Hawaii
& the camp one over from us is knee-deep in water,
lost their tents, have nowhere to sleep
& a dude tells us he dropped acid 10 seconds before they called everything off
& I notice the garbage cans are full
& I tell myself things could always be worse
as I watch car after car get stuck in the muck all night
& weren’t people at Burning Man stuck for days?
& I wish I packed my Xanax
& I’m watching my back like I can’t relax
& we have no more ice
& why do things have to be so complicated?
