Wasn’t it a miracle?
Neither of us died trying to get to the meeting place
all the lights in the world seemed out that night
I had only known how to drive a few months
you were an old hat who routinely broke laws
with bottles wedged between your legs, a
cigarette burning ash down your fingers
there had always been a desire in me
for brokenness, as if I recognized in those
souls, something in myself
or a freedom in people who abandoned ettiquette
and discarding it, became suddenly free
I liked the wild, I liked women with untamed eyes
and dirty minds
the moon was full that night and we watched owls
gather themselves in flight and swoop
cloudy restaurant lights flickering in and out on the side
of the empty high way
I had watched films about a life like this
I said to you, films like Gas Food Lodgings or Paris Texas
where the greatest landscape was the tarmac
and the wide abundant merciless sky
where people sheltered in shadow and night creatures
crawled unseen and women met by closed restaurants
the flicker of their 24 hour advertising, sizzling against blackness
you were strange looking as if you had
deliberately tried to destroy yourself and I
forgot to wear shoes, my feet hot against still baked
soil, biting fiends flying in humid air, thick with ‘unspoken
entreaties
I wanted you to slam me there and then against
the unresisting brake of my car
leaving a bruise the size of texas clouds
I wanted to break apart like rocks with gem stones
inside, find something in both of us
bigger than the sky, deeper than weary darkness
but I was too young then and fear wrapped herself
like a blanket of stars and pulled me back
into the world, into doing what is right, into being careful
and sitting up straight when you eat at the table
all these years later, I still think
if we had set the car on automatic and just ridden
away
down that empty highway, into hushed, blooming night
we might have found the part of us
still lacking
every day we wake up
wash our face, comb our hair
and look too long in the mirror
searching for the lost parts
of our dark dreams
I didn’t have time to un-knot my hair or brush it down
You are afraid to shut the front door
TheFeatheredSleep 