Driving to School in a Hurry, Fall 2021
peanut butter toast tastes the same as it used to i wish i was singing along to diamonds and rust because it always made you laugh and i love that song but bob dylan was so condescending about it he called her “joanie” and he said “it still impresses me” and this is like twenty years after the fact but she talks about how he said her poetry was bad it’s like how you were surprised when i read you a piece about runaway horses and you said “it was actually good” writing isn’t necessarily my thing but it’s yours the toast burned a little on one end and the person in front of me is driving horribly but i’m still a big proponent of the toaster oven it’s a great invention and i never had anything like that in my house as a kid i used to fall asleep in the car when i was teaching you to drive because i’m always driving back and forth and back again to places like ohio or maine because i have to see my family and if the drive is less than fourteen hours it’s not even worth it to fly and i was always driving you places which i was happy to do because i was in love with you but i never stopped driving so when you got behind the wheel i just needed a rest and it wasn’t super important that i paid attention because we were in the high school parking lot and driving is just repetitive motions anyway but seriously your parents should’ve done this i think you’re still learning how to drive but i don’t know because we don’t talk i see your friend walking on the sidewalk and i remember how he talked about his girlfriend to you like she was something that was his and you complained about it to me but i still found myself wondering how you talked about me to him if i was a thing that was yours you sit on this one bench a lot and you never used to sit there everyone describes you as lingering which is how i would describe the moustache you grew over the summer which everyone including myself is curious about i order food for me and my roommate because she’s depressed and i’m sad and i’m not sure if i’m allowed to say they’re the same thing but either way we can’t cook today i have these two bee stings one on my right index finger and one on my left index finger i watched the bee sting my right index finger and i accidentally stuck my left index finger in my sewing machine so i have these symmetrical injuries there’s this parallel motion that i feel with you constantly like how we both went out west on the same day and came home on the same day i had to put on music to make alison comfortable because we just met thirty minutes ago and now she’s sitting in my car she backseat drives which is funny because we just met thirty minutes ago and she doesn’t live around here she says it’s because her husband is a bad driver so i take her where she needs to go and drive to kingston with no sound it’s funny how there are some things we will never see eye to eye on you and i no matter how old we are or how good we are at communicating like alison and her husband and the driving i sing a song i know in italian from when i used to study classical music nel cor più non mi sento i remember all the words but i don’t know what they mean so i think about how much liquid a big pot can hold and sing in italian until i think i get a flat tire but i don’t hear any rubber flapping so i think i’m good i take the long way home because the sun is going down and everything is yellow i look to see if your kitchen light is on it’s the one thing i still do that i wish i didn’t
Pink Moth Literary Magazine