Curled up in the passenger side, my moccasins rested on the edge of the seat.
Projecting heat pleaded the piercing winter from under my skin.
My chin fell slowly as ash insulated my heart.
My lips would part as second-hand soothing soot
Grew arms and cradled my soul like the look
A newborn baby receives when wrapped in adoration.
A suffocation as an indication I was not alone.
Strangers. Soaring together for forty-eight hours.
Oblivious to dangers our adolescent wings never noticed.
Our only focus was on each other.
At first, words of conversation refused to be discovered.
But all at once we slowly uttered
Our pasts until his demons appeared in front of me.
Surprised I could still see through the windshield ahead,
I did not dread the broken being to my left.
Because who was I to judge the stranger
Who’d unknowingly love me as if his life depended on it?
Have you ever been in love with a Thunderbird?
One that flies solely in winter blizzards?
Fueled by chain-smoking cigarettes
And Dunkin Donut cappuccinos with five sugars.
It never once regarded the threat
Of driving through life
At ninety-five miles per hour.
I fell in love at six in the morning, wearing a borrowed jacket.
Coated in sleep’s drowsiness, we floated on clouds,
Dodging white paper coral trees and buried houses.
I fell in love when the world stood still
And the snow descended along with our sanity.
Somehow a Thunderbird granted me amnesty from myself.
As humanity remained asleep, with stealth
We drifted through back roads in horrific elegance
That jostled my brain until my mind was rewired to my heart
And has remained that way since.
