An Illuminated Bone-Sadness
She didn’t know how to drive but was good at
pretending she knew where she was going, good enough to trick me though I wanted
to be tricked; I thought if I got lost with her I could keep her with me long
enough to finish my wooing song and would have every plan I ever cobbled come
true like a Christmas sunrise. She wasn’t supposed to be drinking but she was
drinking and I wasn’t drinking and that normally would have made me testy but
here it was just a necessity. We would drive and drive and pull over and fuck
in big empty harvested fields over a palimpsest-stained sheet my grandmother
had given me just before she died, in the just-dewing grass beneath apple trees
which she would pronounce apfel betraying deutsch old enough to crust over with
nostalgia-sweetness, jumping up to grab at the fruit as though I needed an excuse
to watch her movement in the starlight. We lived on that strange cappuccino
you get from rest-stop machines which is more like the memory of cappuccino
formulated by scientist-chefs locked underground trying to bring back the things
which had surrounded them in their better days. The entire time we were on the
road she didn’t cry once, and when we reached the road where she lived now (which
was faraway from where I lived) I pretended like I couldn’t see it. Or maybe
I really couldn’t see it. When she lifted her head away from mine after she
had kissed me she left a hair on my coat, which I tied around my ringfinger
and told myself I would never lose, but eventually I did.
(12:06.05.19.2005) [/alpha] #