A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

We were always driving and once in the night in the dark after hours and hours, days even of only night driving, you said to me. We’ve gone a thousand miles. We could have gone to New York by now. We could have gone anywhere. You said it in the dark. It was Cedar Street that ends in nothing. That ends in a creek, a deep ravine, the maple trees closing in around it like a dark lonely mouth. You said it in the night in the dark in the closing in. You say it still when I dream, when I nightmare. I can see it, the glint in your eyes reflecting the disappearing street lamps. The way you turn. Your old red Impala, even though it’s been restored, sounds like that old barn creaking as it cools down from the heat of the day, sounds like that one summer that one time when we snuck up there and the wood crackled all around us in the cooling, like that one time when we almost-

I still smell the leather. The spearmint from the gum you don’t chew, just let flavor your mouth. Then flavor mine when we finally stop driving. When we park at the creek. When the car cools around us and the voice from the radio sings against the blue dashboard lights: We are the only ones, the lonely ones and I’m a cat that’s gray and moves into shadows. That moves into the dark. That curls around you around us around all of this.

That is curling still.