POETRY

The Long Drive Home

A prose poem

A little reggae and hip sway with the dishes tonight and I sing as the water, a steady warm stream, trickles between my knuckles. I look out the window, at nothing really. It’s all too altogether lovely to absorb. Sometimes I stand beneath the white oaks and stare at the patches of sky that blink between the leaves, and I breathe, and I breathe, deeply, the scent of air that’s passed through the forest. I am sure bits of the sea pass through those trees and right into and out of me.

This is what I do here; stare out windows at colors, moving parts of a world so easily greened. You, always you, wrap your hands around my hips and move against me and I feel love raging within you, a steady fire that might just burn us both right up. The pentecostal moment passes quickly and you leave me behind, my hands stilled and covered in suds, my chest an irregular pattern of breaths and heartbeats that can’t find their rhythm, now that yours has pulled away.

Now that you have pulled away I feel a vacancy where once was blind faith. Pentecostal persuasions, even of the pants variety, have their effects on a woman of heart-shaped glasses and prone to dancing in the rain. The void carried over into my dreams and a crowd of people gathered to watch our undoing. I wandered path to path, house to house, empty face to empty face. I woke, the dream following me like a wake, to find you, still sitting in the same place.

What are you looking at? you ask. I always answer, the trees, but not this time. I am standing at the window, very still, and mesmerized by wisps of storm clouds moving above the rains, quickly across the sky. It is their hurry that seizes me. It’s been raining hard and steady for two days but the clouds are moving, lacing pulled quickly across the gray. I point them out to you and together we marvel at the hurry of storm clouds.

There are Kent III 100’s on the table. I don’t remember ever seeing those there before. Those are what my daddy smoked when I was a kid. I hold the nearly empty package to my nose and breathe in the scent, deeply, and ask you where they came from. I don’t remember what you said, the light tobacco scent pulling me decades back.

We navigate stores and errands like we’ve done this together for years, you smiling, energetic and jovial as if you had had a night of sleep. Aldi excites you. You buy me almond milk and that Aldi-brand Sugar Smacks cereal I love. You hold my hand in Lowes. We barely notice the drizzle of rain. We are wetted as we browse the plant yard and discuss our favorite flowers, the lack of fuchsias, the price of a baby bald cypress.

Back at our place by the pond, we unload the groceries, weed through expired boxes and cans in the cabinets and fridge, bagging them up to be carried away — making room for what’s new.

There is a green skin across the pond and the rain has taken a small break for the sun. Everything is so green I can almost taste it.

Josie isn’t resting. She jumps away from fleas, scratching herself relentlessly and together we comb them from her skin, our empathy a steady stream of water merging into a pool with a clear glass surface. We can see our faces there. We know that it is natural to run from things that might hurt — but I am not ready for you to do this.

I clicked and maybe that impulse was as innocent as yours but the words are there on the screen and they can’t be ignored. My breaths go into and out of a void. I slip out the door while you sleep, a lone ship sailing away to calmer seas, my heart at the helm and the rain soaks me through but I can’t feel it at all.

Just yesterday we were vacuuming the old away and today we are dust.

We are a Dogwood growing too close to the oak, our roots entangled. We cannot be moved to be saved.

We are rain beads on red cedar, glimmering in the sun, to be dried up before day is done.

But it is night. I cannot forget that it is night or I might close my eyes and remember reggae and our hips in sway and I cannot think of those things as I drive away.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this slice-of-life prose poem, then perhaps others by this author would interest you.

Christina M. Ward is a freelance writer in cannabis, wellness, and clean beauty. Christina’s professional work has been featured in Today’s Health Science, LA Weekly, Village Voice, Men’s Health, and OK! Magazine, among others.

Christina also writes on personal journey, productivity, and relationship topics for Medium publications like this one. If you want to read more of her work on Medium use this join link for unlimited access. A portion of your small monthly dues will go to support the work of the writers and poets that you read.

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