a humid drive to work on april 18th, 2013.
Sandwiched between days of snow in April
I back my car out of the garage into every
August I’ve ever known. Steam forms like
little brick walls around my windows and
for a second I forget where I’m going.
I turn off Candela onto Oneida Wood drive
past a neighbor I’ve never met getting mail.
Who in my head, I know thinks I drive too
fast in the neighborhood.
Waiting at the stop sign I tour my car. There’s
dust on the dash, and flat sparkling in the cup
holder. On the floor of the passengers seat
rests a gum wrapper graveyard. Death is
everywhere.
Off Dead Mans Curve on Willow highway there’s
almost always an accident. I get the feeling the
drivers are distracted by the adjacent river
running somewhere they’ll never see.
Nixon is a long stretch of forest and cornfields
that house deer who practice Kamikaze at night.
A Bushido set. Perhaps they’ve read too much
Mishima.
The last few days have seen endless rain and
have turned this town into Minnesota. The
land of ten thousand little lakes. Ducks broker
real estate deals for beach front property and
vacation on the waves that lick the makeshift
shores as I drive by.
At the tire shop the flag is at half-staff. It’s been
that way all year.
Saginaw is a five-lane highway where left turns
don’t exist. The place a drifter walks. I see him
and I wonder how he came to be so alone. I wonder
does he resent his family? Did he push his friends away?
Does he love anything or anyone? Does anyone love
him? Everyday he is just wandering on the side of the road.
And I hate him, because I am him.
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