(no subject)
We drove through Alabama listening to Dylan like there was no other way, and we were all laid back in the seats ‘til we were comfortable, legs propped up on the passenger dash or one leg curled up in the drivers seat one foot near the brake, cruise control on ninety-five all the way to Mobile. Clouds were shades of pink and green, either mere reflections or maybe just fusion of foliage and sky, dimly I thought of a meeting with a friend, of a broken bridge and a puddle pitch black & barely big enough to call a lake, thought of an idle comment regarding the moons identical appearance in pond and sky-we had laughed at how many times we’d said those words right before we said them again, we loved to hear ourselves talk, to see ourselves standing there as if it were past and the present was somewhere long long long down the time line and passed hundreds of state routes and county roads, as if it were impossible to be where we were when we were.
In Alabama, every road is a back road, and every new face is always a fragment of someone else’s, a fraction of some place you’ve huddled against in the backseats of cars or on garage couches. And every Alabama sky is the same, reminiscent of days when you thought Love lived there, in those pink and green clouds, when love was being eighteen down a road with too little light and never enough turns, when love was slowing your very own hastily put together 1991 model vehicle to that first stop light, when love was having the volume as loud as you wanted-before we knew how right we were and how much wrong we’d see.
We dreamed there, under the familiar Alabama sky on familiar Alabama roads cradled on all sides by wisteria and kudzu and broken branches and dandelions, by those little yellow weeds that always grow in yards and medians, we dreamed there like we always had, with the sun beating down on half of our faces and sunburned arms closest to the windows. We longed for words right enough to say, thought too hard about nothing at all, were compelled to write all that nothing down on endless pages in endless notebooks and settled for silence instead. We slept, and slept, and slept, and listened to Dylan and slept some more. And we were home.
In Alabama, every road is a back road, and every new face is always a fragment of someone else’s, a fraction of some place you’ve huddled against in the backseats of cars or on garage couches. And every Alabama sky is the same, reminiscent of days when you thought Love lived there, in those pink and green clouds, when love was being eighteen down a road with too little light and never enough turns, when love was slowing your very own hastily put together 1991 model vehicle to that first stop light, when love was having the volume as loud as you wanted-before we knew how right we were and how much wrong we’d see.
We dreamed there, under the familiar Alabama sky on familiar Alabama roads cradled on all sides by wisteria and kudzu and broken branches and dandelions, by those little yellow weeds that always grow in yards and medians, we dreamed there like we always had, with the sun beating down on half of our faces and sunburned arms closest to the windows. We longed for words right enough to say, thought too hard about nothing at all, were compelled to write all that nothing down on endless pages in endless notebooks and settled for silence instead. We slept, and slept, and slept, and listened to Dylan and slept some more. And we were home.