the way I like to drive
On the way to meet the sun, I want to do nothing more than speed across my desert Valhalla, inventing Aztec goddesses to ride in my backseat. Dark eyes in the rearview mirror, lips on the side of my neck, and teeth on my ear. I want no plans for today other than driving or hitchhiking somewhere that doesn’t know my name. I almost never feel as alive as when I’m driving down desert roads, the wind in my hair, and my skin tattooed with dust. I drive fast and sometimes put my left foot on the dash and tap it in jackrabbit-time. The pages of my journal shuffle in the wind. The melody strokes my cheek and the dip where pelvis and back join, and I love it loud and quick. The speed of the car matches the rhythm. I could inject both into my veins and overdose on the side of the road, joyful and mad-veined for having experienced it at all.
Every song I hear was written for me; this is what the desert road tells me. It reminds me of when I was fourteen, and my best friend, Lara, and I kept leather-bound notebooks with song lyrics and poems in them. Each poem or song was one we wished had been written about us. We carried books of celebration of the goddess within every girl. Some songs that I remember now are “And She Was” by the Talking Heads, “Something” by the Beatles, and “Junebug” by the B-52’s.
When I drive like that, all feral and uncaring of anything but the distance, everything falls away, Everything is velocity and sunlight, my grin of many teeth and tilted eyes, the road and the wind, my life and my sweet revenge. Love knows there is a life in here somewhere, but it’s not time for it to bloom just yet. I speed towards no one. I escape nothing. I am just another traveler, finding a road to make hers.
The Gasoline Vagabond
Every song I hear was written for me; this is what the desert road tells me. It reminds me of when I was fourteen, and my best friend, Lara, and I kept leather-bound notebooks with song lyrics and poems in them. Each poem or song was one we wished had been written about us. We carried books of celebration of the goddess within every girl. Some songs that I remember now are “And She Was” by the Talking Heads, “Something” by the Beatles, and “Junebug” by the B-52’s.
When I drive like that, all feral and uncaring of anything but the distance, everything falls away, Everything is velocity and sunlight, my grin of many teeth and tilted eyes, the road and the wind, my life and my sweet revenge. Love knows there is a life in here somewhere, but it’s not time for it to bloom just yet. I speed towards no one. I escape nothing. I am just another traveler, finding a road to make hers.
The Gasoline Vagabond