“CHEAP,” I SAID, “AND IT NEEDS TO GET ME 3,000 MILES.”

*




It got me across the country. In fact I’m still driving it. I’ve already got more than my $800.00 worth. It’s ugly, brown and loud, but I don’t mind. There’s every sort of car out here, rusted out orange Pintos, and new Mercedes Benz’s. They make the movies here, so they’ve got to have all kinds. Some people even walk, like this guy I met yesterday playing country songs on his guitar, next to Jimmy Stewart’s star in the sidewalk. I would’ve given him a buck, if he’d known some Johnny Cash.

But here in the January sunshine, where even the migrant workers smile at nothing all day, what I’m thinking of, is you glancing out the window as the snow falls over Beacon St. You’re curled up in a blanket, watching 80’s movies, letting the telephone ring itself out, though not for Emilio Estevez or Molly Ringwald’s sake, you just can’t break the warm isolation of cable television. You’re not thinking of me.

I didn’t know I was leaving you, until I was on the road at three in the morning with only speeding eighteen wheeler’s to keep me company. I thought, some people do this every day and then head home again. But they must wonder, What if, this time I don’t turn around? They must, because it happens every day. I won’t turn around, and I’ll probably never think of you again like this. I’m just a face you saw a few times, had a few beers with, made polite conversation.

It’s not like I’m sending this to you. I just wondered for a minute, what it would be like to wake up in your bed as you were putting on your make-up to head out the door. Could I have lived there for the rest of my life, or was I always headed here, to this sunny ending, alone in my car at the In and Out Burger drive-thru?



 
-Brent Allard
 
previously published in Slipstream

Nothing Stays Open Late

*




You can’t do what you should,

so you’re sitting in a diner by yourself

at sometime like 2 in the morning,

wondering where it went;

what you had just yesterday,

that life you knew was just about to suit you,

but you couldn’t convince to happen.



You and your pride are the last one’s out,

into a night that feels like a second chance.

Only the stars see you smiling.

Everyone else has gone to bed,

and that’s good, you think,

because you couldn’t breathe in

these hours with an audience.

You couldn’t start again

because they know you.



These stars are out for you alone.

The moon makes even your sadness glow.

This time it’s gonna be different

and everything is really gonna work.



You roll down your windows

and sing out loud to the radio

The air you breathe is telling you

that you are still alive,

lucky to be alive.



The highway and the stars must be in love

and you’re catching how they feel.

It’s all for you tonight.



You wonder how far you could go,

if you pointed your car to the moon,

and kept on driving.

Finally you’d be something beautiful

a guy and his car that vanished in the night

and left a shining.

 
                     -Brent Allard