What We Didn’t Know Was How The Song Goes

What We Didn’t Know Was How The Song Goes

He picks me up in his parents’ green Volvo,
torn leather seats already hot from the sun.
He drives barefoot, one on the gas, one on the dash,
a beer between his legs that he sips sideways
like he looks at me riding shotgun.
We rise and fall on country roads,
my hand flying up and down
hanging outside the window
to the beat of The Dead.

Turn it up, I shout,
singing off key.

Summer heat on the horizon shimmers, a mirage
hiding the bruises inside my breast and on the bottoms of my feet,
hiding the crying done quietly in the back seat
at the airfield watching planes come and go,
they come and go –

What we didn’t know was how the song goes.

Published by Black Moon Magazine