I have been in this car for a year.
Just me, chapped hands clasped tight
in the last rays of the setting sun.
Here in the desert. Here near the ocean.
Here the mountains and caverns.
He said my name as if it were the last time.
We drove to the caves — so many years ago —
they turned out the lights
and the dark made it hard to breathe.
We all had such low expectations.
You and me in that car with your shit boyfriend.
Me and her in a car across mountains;
down the 5, we tip into the LA basin chasing the sunset.
My cousin and I and four cylinders
chased by fire up a switchback ridge.
When the snow came down so deep
we turned on the running lights
and prayed for six then seven hours.
On route 66 we rode on empty in the dark.
It’s the desert between Reno and Vegas
and we are dust trying not to be dust.
It’s time travel, escape, grief, another stop for gas.
A desperation, a sloughing of skin, a new beginning.
Some people take with them tight bonds,
trails of connections, and others –
Well, the others.
It’s surgical, the way I cut.
The way I build to a run.
Next to my cousin again, north again
a decade later and alcohol sweat.
These memories the same,
Air through the vents, through lungs.
Radio, cassette, playlist, a burned cd then satellite radio.
I have been in this car for years.
The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it 