Hear a cold Dakotan highway
Can you bag one more state line
Watch the needle fall down through empty
Idle what ifs fill my mind
As the highway lullaby set in
It was exit 102
Downshift to stretch my legs
Walked in this greasy spoon
Her smile came with the coffee
Somehow bitter and sincere
She said, “Hon, where are you headed?”
I said, “What’s wrong with right here?”
Behind a slick trucker wit
The tall stacks and buttered grits
Her skin looked like the corn born & raised
She said, “Boy, just put your map away...
There is no downtown Blaine”
Spinning gossip into gospel
Not much in between
Then her face turned jelly red
Fear this is just what it seemed
She said, “Take me where you’re goin’
Take me where you been...”
This heart has been a refugee
I’m just the next of kin
Cloudlike bandage ’round her fingers
No phantom diamond ring
She knew she had been burned
When another order-up bell dinged
Did you reach out for the wrong one
Let go at the wrong time
Musta been the torch she held for
some old high school flame
He moved on when he found out
There is no downtown Blaine
Across a half-full glass of water
I saw her reach back for this urn
As she said, “You look ’bout half-empty”
I spied her window to the world
Then she tried to write my check out
Lost her pen behind her ear
“When you lose track of your heart...”
She whispered, “That’s my biggest fear”
Then she forced out one last smile
I wouldn’t buy her mute denial
But I left that girl a five and all my change
That’s about a buck a word
for the whole damn truth
There is no downtown Blaine