• Can I take you home?
    His words tickled the teardrops in my tummy.
    Poor memory keeps me from considering
    the trivial parking lot stumbles
    and avoided eye contact
    just in case he can see through to the broken Tilt-A-Whirl
    I’m striving to swallow down.

    He laughed at me
    as I ever-so-nonchalantly
    tried opening the locked passenger door.
    Of course he would make it difficult to get inside.

    Tom’s car is a racecar in Suburbia
    whose destiny exceeds twenty-five miles per hour speed limits.
    Its eyes behind a window,
    salivating over the world of risk-taking.
    Doesn’t it deserve to know what it’s like to be
    a jet plane in a cloudless sky?

    Tom’s car doesn’t belong here, anchored and waiting.
    And neither do we.

    And I watch his fingertips stroke the steering wheel
    as he tells me a story
    I’ve already heard.
    I swear he keeps his lips moving
    just to keep my mind guessing.
    But I can’t read lips unless they’re touching mine.
    He drags his story on just long enough
    for me to finish memorizing the curvature of the dashboard.
    Sighs shadowed by silence.
    Thanks for the ride.

    And each night as I sulk up my driveway,
    I know he watches me.
    Hands in my pockets,
    studying the steps I take to the front door.

    It’s a drought of a repeated favor.
    And I’m thinking I’m dumb for thumbing this umbrella.