DUI

Night cloaked roads
With spat out stars in polluted skies
Lie heavy on my shoulders.
My hands sweat as I grip the wheel
Slick and hot under my fingers.

That presence is in my backseat
That I purposely keep
Filled with useless junk
So there is no room for passengers.
Not that passenger
Who likes to find her way in anyway
A backseat driver
To my deepest melancholy.

She smiles with blood stained teeth
And I used to be afraid
That I might be in that backseat too
But now I'm just sad
That she's just part of the scenery
That haunts my waking hours
And I am part of the asphalt ahead.

Try not to look through that dark glass
Where death rattles and slippery hands
Live in their own cyclone of grief.

She doesn't speak
But her red smile
Either meant to encourage me forward
Or drag me down into her world
Of shattered glass and skin grafts
Warms me till it burns.

To feel this guilt is to
Drown in the blackness
Of that night with flashing police lights
And a faint gurgling
I tried not to find the source of.

She commented on the brightness of the horizon
As the sun was setting.
I thought it was beautiful too
And it reminded me
Of her radiance that existed on the inside
Or maybe it was just in me.

She was the most radiant right before the fall.

I pulled off to the side of the road
At that place where that world
Of March 1st, 1970 ended.
You'd never know
Someone had died there.
It's only wet asphalt
And crushed beer cans
That litter her deathbed.

I see the lights of her dead eyes
Reflected in rain puddles
And my tear is added
To the black ocean.

The lights of the semi
Were just little bits of light
Choirboys singing our theme song
And getting tangled in our irises.

She never touched me before
Always just stayed
In that backseat
Never daring
To bridge the gap
Between our worlds.

Now I hold her hand too
And I don't recognize the man
Driving now on the phone
With his wife after work
But we both recognize
The lights of the semi truck.

"Close your eyes",
She told me softly.
With each blink
The man's terrified eyes
Drifted back to us
And the lights collided
And illuminate our gray faces
Through that dark glass.