Push start
Inch forward
“This car was built to run”
she told herself
Lights on
Tunnel of sight
A path in the fog
She doesn’t trust her own eyes
Moss crept
And bent under the tires
Thighs tense
Grass blue in the night
She dreamt of swing sets and mixtapes
Warm parking lots next to closed schools, just the two of us
But steel rusts after a snow
And I wouldn’t know the name of streets anymore if you asked me.
I lift the fabric of my shirt to see ink
The girl who decided on the heart
Sitting on 6th street in the heat
Bored, somehow, in a crowd with strangers
She was a piece of blown glass before shaping
From the earth, raging
With no idea how delicate she was
Slipping out of buttery, diseased hands, oozing with his self hate,
No one gave her anywhere to rest safely.
Now she sits in machinery in the dark
Unreliable from too many years, too many miles,
and a memory of every drunk driver on the dinged and twisted tin
that has become her skin.
A steady whispering of the leaves sound like the sea.
She could always breathe better just before the dawn.
The sky glows like the sweet star she used to call home
And lifts the weight from her tired limbs.
Foot in the gas, she knows this road but it’s takes all her faith to face it.
She called for some company to help her with her fear.
A number she’s always had but never gets an answer.
Ring. Twice. Three times.
On the end of the line “édes álmokat” a foreign voice said.
And it was morning again.