|
Vacuuming out the car
by Natalie JonesRemember the driving, 31 days to cross America once then twice.
I took you to California then you hugged me on your driveway in Florida.
When I tell stories of our time, its nothing tangible that remains
its our footsteps in the sun, its how wed never seen mountains like that.
I stack the evidence of the road: the postcards, the atlas
I place atop old books we read aloud. I missed you and loved you for miles
and miles and miles. I dont want to marginalize the days we felt like
body paragraphs to a very long magazine article or to have to toss
the materials into the trash: a small town, a sun dress, dream catchers
in New Mexico, how things started to change in Nebraska, and in
Vancouver when we stopped looking at one another and neither of us
said anything. And it was okay. Some flower petals and each grain
of sand on beaches in Oregon, in Alabama. I name-drop states and
you flip a page or turn a corner: to Missouri! to Texas! Navigated some
streets, lost some to the soft shoulder of the highway or to better days.
Its how we saw forests of broken tree trunks in New Orleans
leaning against one another like the mourning after a funeral
and its how we didnt mention our dead friends name except
once when the windows were rolled all the way down.
Receipts under our feet on floors and out the broken back screen door.
We didnt drive across state lines for documentation purposes or for
some obvious destination, but toward each other. We left so that
we could come back. To take out the trash. To vacuum out the car.
09/07/2006 Posted on 09/08/2006
Copyright © 2010 Natalie Jones
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Angela Nuzzo on 09/08/06 at 04:12 AM Very nice details. A haunting narrative. I love the ending and how it brings this larger-than-life trip back around and cements it in a solid reality - "We left so that we could come back. To take out the trash. To vacuum out the car." |
|
