“When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing, but of light.”
– Maggie Nelson
I drive furiously north with the thickest olive oil
in my wiper fluid reservoir, sliding out
from the center like watercolor paint blown
with a straw. My foot is leaden
and my blood feels soupy and ferrous, like comfort
food made in a bind. My windshield
looks like a funhouse mirror: in it, I see outlines
of passed trees behind my dense insincere,
oval stars, color congested yellow. I turn, and every car
for miles blinks right-turn in sync.
There is nothing, then menacing red, then
nothing again. Reminds me of the goats
that my mother made docile with bacon fried
in benadryl and lined up for slaughter: the only light they emit
is the one that says where they will disappear next.
photo credit: StockSnap via Creative Commons
