Work Text:
a long drive out west. snow covering the fields.
you are always so, so unsure.
you are in a car with your best friend
and you don’t know if either of you are going to make it.
out of the car, yes.
*
here is the radio, its always black whistle, its always clear-shot static. here is a window to rest against your forehead, a gasp of air to bend your lungs, a moment to close your eyes as you let the pedal sink.
this is how you would like to go: on and on.
*
you were nervous when you met him, as if you knew how the tremble of him, the catch of his breath, could ruin you. this isn’t sexual: it’s just that when you drive you can’t help but notice his hands, the way they smooth over the dash, again and again, as if to say it’s all right, which you already know.
*
you are both twenty-six. you are young, you are stupid, you are gnashing your teeth at imaginary skies.
do you need to get away? you asked, knowing he would say no, but,
yes.
please.
*
he told you once that he doesn’t remember his mother
but he guesses she smelled like home.
you asked him what that was.
he told you the feel of ice in the air when it gets behind your eyes.
you wonder, now,
if he has ever slept in comfort.
*
when you found him on the balcony you were a shoelace around a young girl’s throat. when you found him on the balcony he was a heart murmur.
*
your brother used to read you poetry. there was one you particularly liked about bodies, about the way they fit into each other like maps, my kansas on your kansas, etc., etc. you wonder if he can feel it: the road beneath you becoming more than a road, a map, a dusty treasure trail. when you feel that close to heaven you can only imagine the concrete splitting to drop the both of you into hell.
*
you would like to comfort his kansas, weather his lake tahoe, stop for coffee in his milwaukee.
you are in a car with your best friend
and you have never felt so close to home.
*
and so you drive, and drive, because you would do anything for him, would nail wings to the roof if he wanted to fly, even if it was alone. don’t know where you’re going, or if you’ll ever get there, but for now you are in the countryside and it is snowing and silent and here.
you do not know this, but you are driving back towards hell’s kitchen, you are going straight but you are turning around, you are headed right for a warm dark office where lamplight blinks in the cheap wiring and the smell of burnt coffee stains the walls. it has the same music of the road, except this time neither of you want to kill yourself, or drop out of school, or just sleep for christ’s sake—no, this time you are healthy and together and safe and, well.
happy is a complicated word.
*
you do not know this either: if you asked,
he would put himself behind the wheel and drive.
*
this is a moment with your best friend in a car
and the horizon is neverending.
the horizon is a cheap trick,
the fields are unraveled thread by thread,
the snow falls upward
as you crane your neck
and stare at the sun,
whose face is,
as always,
never his.