We Ride

I started thinking about all the road trips we had taken, and the ones we never will. How that sentence alone could mean so much something to others who cannot, will not understand that it could only ever be meant for one. I've driven solo through those sanddunes, black bandana across the ridge of my nose, tan topless wind sting. There have been drunk drives and thrilling trips and endless interstates where I forget to keep you on my mind. I've cruised and cambered and rode shotgun in someone elses dream. Rode into sunsets that don't even feel symbolic. Sometimes the sun and I are just passing time. And that alone has been a satisfaction; there have been countless rolled down windows and locked doors and socks drying on the dash and ankles browning in the glare. I lean my temple on the glass and ride it all out. Sometimes over the foothills, or down Colfax Avenue I am at the steering wheel or huddled in the backseat ducking smoke, and the wind whips my hair into ropes or I'm sucking air out the sunroof, often it's dawn and I'm gnawing at the bones the morning throws for me, at me. 

And on all these drives, I am always dj. I pick the music from his or her front seat. And they all listen so intently. I think then that I am teaching them through tones and sing louder at the bridge as a clue. I lean on the console, drum on the glove apartment, I chant. I am never yours (she never was).

The offramp appears and there has only ever been one who I let sit right next to my soul, on an interstate, through a snowstorm in the flatlands. Westward. I even let you pick the music. 

There have been many drives, my love, and many routes and rest stops and roadgames too. But only once did I buckle up and take the trip that counts.