I imagine it will blind me

when the clouds clear up; it's

been misty-gray-miserable

since this morning

and I've been alone

On approach,

my stomach is up in my throat

I hope I won't be able to breathe

hanging out R's car

window on highway one

Hair breathed away from my forehead

Sun blinking hello,

morse code on the ocean

The sea is a switchboard

and I am flying

Well, R's driving

My Introduction to Creative Writing class last semester was generally disappointing, but they did have me write two observations each day about things I saw on campus. During this time, I was living in temporary housing, having to cross much of the campus each day. Here are some such observations. :)

- There is an orange cat who likes to sit under the apple tree across from my house. I'd like to write a children's book about it

- The plant that my roommate and I have been caring for has gotten so tall that it's starting to droop. I wonder if I gave it too much water, or if I did something wrong? It grew wildly fast, coming back from death miraculously, but now I'm worried that it's fading again.

- A squirrel is lying in the leaves beside my walking path. I don't notice him there until he scrambles to run away in a noisy thundering of dried leaves. It effectively startles the breath out of me, and I stand there, chest heaving and scared as the squirrel climbs into a nearby tree. He clings to the lower trunk. We stare at each other. The tree is yellow and alight with too-warm early October sun. I ask the squirrel, "what the fuck is wrong with you? huh?” lifting my hand in exasperation. I realize I am standing in the middle of an empty gravel path. Alone, late for breakfast, talking to a squirrel.

- Vermont popcorn is 0 for 2. The bags of popcorn I've gotten so far have been so dry and flavorless. Too bad.

- Trees that just last week were full and orange are now half bare, fading to yellow to brown

- Lately it has all started to feel real

- I hear the Canada geese through my window. I don't get up to look, but it makes me happy to imagine them flying south for the winter. It conjures a memory of a tweenage summer, sitting on my friend's trampoline in early September, watching the v pattern soar across a purple and orange sky

- Our little plant has unfurled a leaf!! She tilts then she grows!! She recovers!!

- All I can think about is how to write a love letter without bearing my soul all the way — how to say the things that I cannot say? So I guess I won’t say them at all

And I do slightly miss

Our big house by the river

Gravel and high grass and burnt umber leaves

You’d drag your body home, I would wait up to see you

Stood at the top of the stairs like a dog

Cold feet on the hardwood

Birdsong in the valley

You were already gone by the time I arose

A shirt on the bedspread

Umbrella by the door

Oh, the sweet end of September

Three windows, wide open

We had endless time

I drank the fog in the mornings

We shared a bed ’till the very last moment

Then you went back across the hallway

And I was alone

The geese overhead

Covered your conversation

Your mom away somewhere sunny

Without seeing

Or hearing you, I felt it

All in my chest

My cheeks burn bare against my frozen face

Chocolate tucked inside my jacket sleeve

Melt warm against my wrists, my heart is lace

Menorah flickering, goodbye to grief

Wishing for a locket, flux the nighttime

Into glass and save, never to shatter

My stomach is full with food and tired rhyme

I would trade for nothing, and that matters

The radiator wakes to cry aloud

The lamp is pale against the dark of night

I sigh and let the love again enshroud

Finally, heart, I do not wish to fight

Her quiet heart, it beats against my ear

I sleep, serene, my windy mind is clear

I met Adelaide at the edge of September. She was still tan from the hours spent boating out of Greenwich Cove. She grew up knee-deep in the water. Callouses were the result of years running back and forth from her grand, yellow shingle house down to the shore. She was all Catholic school and Fair Isle sweaters and competitive tennis. Her father was the founder of a yacht club, for Christ's sake. I was genuinely shocked she didn't have golden retrievers. She had green eyes and flaming, mane-like red hair. She towered over me. A shiksa princess. My mother would have killed me.

Our first date went awfully. She was startlingly quick -- wildly bright, but also quick to temper and start argument. Later, I would fall hard for her Irish temper, but that first day, I was having none of it. She was out of touch, so privileged she wouldn't know poverty if it slapped her in the face; and I was nearing that. As I grabbed my coat to storm out, I spat at her that she reminded me of Bunny Corcoran from The Secret History. A huge smile grew across her face; "I love that book!"

"That's not meant to be a compliment," I hissed, fumbling around for my wallet in my coat pocket. "They literally fucking killed him." I was broke and on basically every scholarship, but I still wanted to pay.

Thankfully, unlike Bunny, she was generous with her money. She got the tab. I flipped her off and left, hoping I would never see her again. The next day in creative writing, she sat in her usual seat next to me, and slid over a chocolate rose.

"I'm sorry," she said, face all dewey from the late summer. The moment we locked eyes, I knew I was done for. She continued, "I shouldn't have been so volatile yesterday. You're just... you're really smart, Hadassah, and I wanted to keep up with you. I may have gone a bit too far with the debate."

Underneath the rough, ambitious exterior, she was sincere, empathetic, and sensitive.

She was dedicated in school. She was a poli-sci major back then, an art history minor, dead-set on being in Congress. I was never quite sure why she enrolled in that American University creative writing class, but I am so glad she did.

woken by the chill

autumn breathes on my neck,

a lover arriving just in time

prepare silently for the day,

feet on dusty hardwood

our big, empty house

is quiet and cold

I have let myself get distracted

by the loudness of it all

up late the night before,

reveling in the warmth of lamplight

imagine my roommate

warm and asleep

behind her closed door

leave the key on the railing

shut the door behind

off to live my life

but I pause

to watch the fog gathered low

clinging to the mountains

like ceran wrap left by a stranger

in our cabinets

breathe shallow,

breathe it in

the first gray day

I will never have it back

can only cradle

my gilded memories

One of my best friends has a 1973 Pontiac Firebird.

For as long as I've known him, he's been a classic car fanatic. Knows more about cars than anything I know. For holidays we buy each other matchbox cars, and possibly the most daunting part about moving to college is choosing which cars I want to bring with me. It's his birthday today, actually.

Junior year was when he started searching harder for a car — it was the year we got our licenses, after all, and for him I think it was a sign that everything would open up. Actually buying that muscle car — feeling the steering wheel under his hands — would cement for him that life would get better after high school. I thought of him going out west, flying down into the sunset in some decade-bending teenage cowboy tribute to Cannonball Run. He shopped around for a bit — sent me pictures and videos of cars all different colors, white and red and black and gray.

Then, finally, the summer before our senior year. He chose a car from New York state: a blue 1973 Pontiac Firebird, two white stripes down the hood, white interior. He named the car Bluebird. He has a matching baseball cap. Bluebird is his baby.

I got to see it before anybody else. It was a late summer day, August sucking the life out of all the trees. The garage air was thick and saturated with the smell of gasoline. Bluebird took up space in both a literal and metaphorical way, tangible in a new and dazzling sense. Under my hand it was solid and comforting, not thin like my humble (but worshiped) 2002 VW Passat. My friend pulled open the door and let me sit. It was sort of like entering Wonderland; the world got so much bigger, and I got so much smaller, dropping into those beat-up white leather seats.

Now, I did ask permission to write this piece. The caveat, my friend said, was that he wanted me to say how many times this car has broken down on him. And I would be such a liar if I didn't report that (although I’m bad with the specifics). The first time he took Bluebird out, it was leaking gas all over the road — one of the problems I remembered (without asking him) was that there was a hole in the gas tank. He’s taken it for a few other spins. Most of those ended with a dead battery and a call to AAA. He had to wait a year to get it to a mechanic, and it took up all the free space in his mind. I introduced him to another friend of mine, and the two of them took up the free space in my mind talking nonstop about their cars that they were fixing up.

I had an image of Bluebird fitting flawlessly into our senior year, as I think my friend did. I thought he'd become a legend in that thing, cruising around our small town, pulling us up to prom like a couple of movie stars. We never really got that, but the 20 minutes I have gotten make up for that.

He always told me I would be the first person he drove in that car. And he kept his promise, texting me the day after graduation, to let me know that it was time. I wanted to write about how difficult springtime had been for me. We had undergone so many big changes — we’d just graduated high school, I turned 18 about ten days before. For the entire month of June I had been wasting away as I fell for a girl who hardly gave me the time of day. Earlier that morning we had dropped my grandma off at the airport, and now there was nothing to distract me.

And then came the text from my dear friend.

The garage door opened, and it was just as it was a year ago, when I got to see the car for the first time. This hulking, beautiful, powerful machine. I excitedly slid into the seat, rolled down the window, discovered there was no working seatbelt. He revved up the engine. Slowly, energy and excitement fizzing around, he began to back out the driveway, me craning my head to see the best I could if he was going to hit the curb.

And then we were off. I had been nervous that the car would break down, but those worries quickly dissipated as he maneuvered the car around construction and we went up to a circular neighborhood (one of suburban condo hotspots). I couldn’t help but laugh out loud; my mom had no idea I was being driven around in a muscle car, playing the Beatles from my phone, the wind in my hair. To this day, it is one of my most fond memories. I can’t imagine the triumph I assume my friend felt as we drove around.

He took me home after in his normal boring  modern car and I expected it to be somewhat anticlimactic, but the feeling stayed. That buzzing joy of riding in his 1973 Pontiac Firebird.

Author’s note:

It’s been hard for me to write this piece. The only thing, it seems, that has gotten me out of that rut is the song anything by Adrianne Lenker, and the swell of love for my friend that I get every time I saw this challenge. It’s his car, but he’s my friend, and I think the two are inevitably linked. I’m submitting this largely unedited. It is all from the heart, from the mind.

his hand on my shoulder

flowers flop in my fist

"c'mon, let's go," he says

and I feel it start in my chest

jittering, crackling, burning

nausea settles heavy

tell him it's okay — it’s too late to escape

let him pull me along

pretend that it's her

pretend I belong

my body is screaming

that the walls are closing in

short of breath, sweaty palms

go to the bathroom

cold water on my wrists

bring myself back

shudder and shake off the ghost of his touch

i’m okay

I don't think I ever posted this piece -- I just discovered it in my notes app and wanted to post for posterity. I have so much nostalgia and grief for last summer. I love to write about time, and the seasons, and I wish I could comfort my younger self and tell her that she will look back on it with a certain amount of disdain but also relief that it's over now. I want to tell her that it's over now.

Untitled

That night — when I first lay

with my face close to femininity —

was at the beginning of June. Yet

May haunts me, with its soft breeze and

unerring greenness. I was still gentle.

I never asked

for any of it

and you are so free

I went to Virginia

saw the sky

then realized how much healing

was left to do

"and no, I'm not angry, / I think that I'm just feeling sore / 'cause the truth is that you just don't like me that much anymore"

I Just Don't Think That You Like Me That Much Anymore - Leith Ross

I guess it's just that I wanted you. I wanted you so bad I thought I would cry from the feeling. It was a weird juxtaposition -- sitting in your humid room, making small talk, listening to the a.c. hum -- but inside I was dying.

I guess it's just that I wanted you. I don't want people. I don't think I've ever wanted anyone. But I wanted you.

Not just for the touch, of course. I wanted to go to the farmer's market with you. I wanted to share an umbrella and buy a big container of strawberries. I wanted to have a little life with you for the three months we were blessed with. I wanted to fall asleep on your shoulder as our friends began to leave the party. I wanted you to be my person, the one I was always with, the one who got in the car no matter where we were going. I wanted you to tell me I was beautiful. I wanted to eat family dinner at your house, and help you walk your dog, to play music with your dad, to listen to all your favorite songs. I wanted to go to museums. I wanted to hold your hand.

I wanted someone to want me. Willingly, earnestly, with a pink blush intensity -- all consuming and beautiful -- and I thought you did. Wanted me, that is. I'm not sure why I thought that, though. I spent half the time begging for your attention, and the other half crying that you wouldn't see me. Leaving split my chest in two. I honestly hope you don't care. It would help it all make sense a bit more.

The day after the breakup (can I even call it that? We were hardly together) I went with my photography class to Coney Island and saw the ocean and thought I would drown in the sheer vastness of it. It was so hot that I could watch the sunburn spread across my arms. I wanted to bottle that day. I wanted to breathe the sea air for every second of the rest of my life. I thought I could live on that boardwalk forever, above one of the little stores, and never go anywhere else.

I wonder if you'll ever get your disposable camera developed. We both bought one. I took all those pictures of you, and I think there might be a couple of me on yours. If you do get it developed -- a few years down the line, maybe at your college darkroom -- and it brings you back to that beautiful April evening, send the pictures to me. I would give anything to go back there, to watch you laugh and eat ice cream in an empty Chelsea Market; when we only just started to run out of time; before I fell for you.