Your Nissan Stanza

By Meghan Kemp

Ten. I am lately tired of claiming that

the world won’t hold together. I lately

have had enough of suspicion of

artifice and forged connections. I am

lately tired, and it is late, and you are

tired and you are falling asleep. Four oh

five. I will drive and you will lean your head

on the window and it puts you to sleep. One oh

five. I dedicate this sundown to my

predecessors in the carpool lane, who

ease me down to thirty with cascades of

brakelights signing that they’re all already

doing what I’m about to do. I will

complete the choreography, I will

drive while you sleep. Six oh five. I dedicate

the fire over Santa Clarita to our

passing on the left, to the checking of our

rearview mirrors, our most benevolent

yielding to out-of-state licence plates

on an obfuscated onramp. Ninety-

one. To the never-dark night sky I

dedicate the way that at least on

the San Diego Freeway one is not,

can never be, completely all alone.

Fifty-seven. To the one last workman

standing still beside a floodlit open

excavation site, I dedicate the

possibility that he rhymes. We offer

him a decreased speed ordered by orange

signs and so the world is changed around him:

we move differently. This is to say, your

car, my care, this is all yours as you are

mine to transport. I offer movement through

named channels, arteries and metaphors.

Twenty-two. I offer the moment when

after we merge the GPS doesn’t

know where it is yet. Five. I offer you

Los Angeles, which is so hard to end

in any direction. I promise that

someday we’ll move home somewhere with lower

rent and universal healthcare. Ten. I

promise that wherever that home is will

always rhyme with here. Four oh five. And here,

I promise you that we are so, so small.

I offer you that. I promise myself

that we live here to prove this to ourselves,

to be counted and skipped over in these

self-melting numbers, that we must live here

so that we never get proud. One oh one.

I want to go back to those forged connections

across artificial structures. I want

you to see what I’m doing for you. Don’t

wake up, just sleep and watch me drive. Sleep and

see how it’s too late to make another

way for me to be. One. Lend me your car.