driving into the winter

drafts from last year

When I was driving on these backroads, I was thinking about how many times you must have, turned your shoulders ninety degrees to match turn of the wheel to the curves on the road. Your hands were hardly ever gentle. Your foot on the accelerator as if to jolt awake everything with a breath. For you, there was always somewhere to go, something to do. Nothing was ever too far. Your hands always reaching towards the sky. Your eyes digging deep into the dirt as if to uncover the secrets of an ancient civilization.

I always wondered how fast your heart could go. As the sun harshens its golden rays in the corner of my windshield, I understood why your legs never slowed the run. You were running away from it all. From the excess of light that traverses beyond its purpose to illuminate, when it begins to blind. You, who knew exactly between which lines your name belongs. You, who would tread far enough to never dream of a touch.

And nothing could ever be close enough.

Your hands turned the steering wheel like the spiral of time itself, asphalt abrading rubber into the smooth sailing night over waves.

Your hands seemed to reach into full pockets and I outstreched mine towards you. Somewhere along the rusted phone lines, the static screech shrouded what I wished to whisper to you. You hear I was hungry and would empty your pockets in my hands. I only closed my fist to trap your remaining warmth.

Once the pain fades, the clairvoyance allows me to see for what it was. The desire for belonging trumps desire to drive. There is always an empty seat on the passenger side and the slamming door quakes the metal frame of the car. The squeaking breaks and the friction of wipers scurrying faster and faster to undo the storm. And in my head there is a setting sun on the rearview mirror. A blinding past or a rainy road ahead. Or maybe it was all a guise. You held tight in the shelter in the rain because somehow you didn’t lose vision when you lost sight.

Now that it doesn’t hurt to remember you, I remember all that.

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I’ve found myself in your hometown more in the past few weeks than in all the years I’ve lived so close to it, and every time I’m here I’m reminded, yet again, of everything God has protected me from.

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How is it November and the sun flushes my knuckles when my fingers wrap around the steering wheel? The toasty afternoons doesn’t let me forget the summer that’s past. Winds howl in the evening to foreshadowing what’s ahead. Pomegranate juice stains the tips of my mother’s fingers as she hands me a steel bowl full of seeds that shine like jewels. I eat with a spoon and my tongue warms the cold metal. My hands stay clean. I eat, not because I’m hungry, but because I’m empty. I chase the sun across the horizon and run into you. Only in memory. The roses still bloom out of habit. My gardener shears them out of habit. I trace my fingers along the cut ends of the stem. Soon, the winds will be cold enough to abrade our faces into flower fields. Soon, the leaves crunching beneath my feet will only leave hoping for a spring when I’ll run into you. Till then, I’ll let the heat of the November sun fill my palm. Till then, I’ll reminisce the scent of the petals I placed in yours.

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There are dense ribbons of text that coil themselves into letters I never wish to recall. My hands move faster than the words that churn in the liminal spaces between lip and tongue and my right ring finger reaches for the key that does not exist on this century old typewriter.

You, with your back against a wood bench faking a smile until the table itself turns and you can tell the little ones how you calculated the torque. Your smile is real this time.

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There is a forecast of some geomagnetic storm and my irrelevant little town with a silly sounding name is supposed to have a show. Of course, I found out the morning after I had claimed to be exhausted and went to bed early only to be unable to sleep and wished for rain to be tapping against my window instead.

I send my best friend poems and she tells me that whoever I write about will be a lucky man. Will he though? What use has a poem ever been to anyone? What use has it ever been to me? To scratch blunt metal ends of pens with ink too viscous to flow against wounds I lie have scarred. I see birds fly the next morning. Against gray skies. Through the fog lights.

My dear, maybe I wish to ask you, could you suffice with a sky lit of fireworks after witnessing an aurora borealis from your childhood window?