The Driving Lesson

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.