We were like two cars
passing in the night.
You followed my brakes,
then I yours.
Then you stopped
for a bag of corn chips
and six dollars of Texaco
and I kept going.
A little later
I pulled off the road
and saw you slow,
take your eyes away from traffic,
then speed up.
I was waving at you.
In Bristol I found
a truckstop in Virginia
and you, a diner in Tennessee
but it was like we ordered
off the same menu,
ate the same
biscuits and gravy and pie,
bought the same jukebox song
with different quarters,
danced in our minds
holding our elbows alike.
Still trading headlights,
weary, no more laughter,
we got lost in the Smokeys.
How odd to find you
five years down the road
hitch-hiking in the desert
going back east against my west
both our thumbs
shaking at blind drivers,
the yellow painted lane dividers
peeled, cracking, turned up
like molting side winders,
the rings on our fingers
like we married each other
and not some stranger.
What happened Sara?
Where did we go wrong?
