Innocence nine -

Across the Texas highway in the Jeep she wanted since high school,
Lauren and I drive.
It is January and cold. Damp from the skies
that traveled from thuren and I drive.
It is January and cold. Damp from the skies
that traveled from the Gulf,
and that is why the gloves.
No sound but the tires on the concrete,
and the shift as we adjust ourselves.
We have never done this.
I don’t know why she’s here.

I had to leave for awhile. Get out.
I can’t tell them that I’m damaged,
not because they’re parents but because they’re people
of sometimes simpler methods.
Comprehension is not beyond them,
but the repair is.
When I found the fault within,
it was not guilt but fear that drove me home,
drove me out to this road,
is still driving me.

I said that I had to take a trip.
I was just going.
She just packed and was there when I left.
I just drove.
It was a just action. Just because.

Now this cold weather is around us like a womb
barren of all birthing.
Her long hair bundled under a black hat,
her legs curled to her chest.
She watches the road like a sailor,
seeking a shallow or a crest that I may miss.
Or she is alone in herself.
I am not watching the mile markers,
the green signs of passage.
I am not marking the miles.
All Texas towns have names like “Charity”,
as if the graces had a destination,
or “Purity” a residence by a lake.

“Pull over,” she says, and I do, to the shoulder where the clay-like soil splatters
out over the mud-flaps and the road,
and we coast for ten feet,

Out across the land, where in spring I have driven with Gail to see friends,
through acres of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes and buttercups,
there is actual sage, a twisted tree.
She opens her door and steps slowly down,
gracefully planting her foot in the soil.
I follow suit,
I open my door,
I plant my foot.

“You could have told them,” she says,
“Whatever this is.”
I nod.
“They are always better than we give them credit for being.”
I nod.


This sunset is a cold one, over this land.
My sister is a bundle of grayness,
crossed arms and eyes half-closed.


“We must be halfway there,” she whispers.
“Darkness always means you’re halfway there.”

I sigh and hold my sister to me. She is tense at first, then relaxes
as if she is crying.
she is relieved not to have to speak.

So we stand here by the side of the highway, if only for these minutes.
Like two tattered beings after a sandstorm,
after a clarion of voices.

We will have to go back the miles we have driven,
take off the gloves,
learn to talk in normal tones.
The highway towns will never miss us.
But they were halfway there.





GLS
11.10.92