The rain had been following us for days,
continued to linger overhead
as we drove in silence to the cemetery entrance
where he stopped, threw his keys
into my lap, “You drive”,
he said, although I’d only done it once before.
I straddled the gear shift, the pant cuffs
baggy around my gangly legs, catching
an old soda can, the radio knob. He strolled around
to the passenger door, sat next to me,
head matted from the wet world outside.
The key felt warm and heavy
as I slid it into the ignition.
I looked over for a reassuring nod,
a confident smile. Nothing.
He just looked forward, with the coldness of a stranger,
unfazed, with a stillness (common these days),
the presence of a ghost.
I drove us up the windy roads toward mother’s grave
taking round-abouts two or three times over
to extend the journey.
Inside, to myself, I started to laugh
at ridiculous scenarios like what if I hit a tombstone,
releasing spirits, like the water of a fire hydrant, cut loose
from capture. The rain drops (the dead, spitting?) began to lessen
as I pretended that my dad and I were really going
somewhere, to a life beyond this one
where no one knew our names
where our histories faded with lack of recognition,
where sorrow escaped as the identity that locked it in,
kept us wedded to it, disintegrated.
I begin to weave the car
back and forth and back
on the maze of
empty roads framed by neatly mowed grass,
the verdant life cradling stone.
I started singing. He smiled slightly.
I think I saw his foot tap. And for a second,
a freedom caught us in a forgetting
of where we intended to be. My left arm tingled,
tickled by the rays of the sun’s escape, a fleeting
reprieve from the dampness
that had us cloistered for days, in front of the television.
And, we ascended
the gradual incline taking us closer to the sky.
My foot pressed on the gas pedal until
we began to slow
I started screaming, I kept pushing. The car felt heavier
and heavier, its corps hardening as I begin pumping the pedal,
to resuscitate, to bring breath back into this feeling,
as the hand of the fuel gauge
unapologetically dipped below the red line.
We stopped smiling. Stopped tapping.
I pressed my forehead into the steering wheel,
cold, the leather like clammy palms.
Slamming my fist into the wheel’s heart
the horn’s wail chased the sun’s rays
away, abandoning us
to the clouds merciless melancholy.
We opened our doors
only to slam them shut,
to walk, in silence
through the rain
to find my mother’s name.
