Concourse

My car is remarkably slow and tiny so I’ve grown accustomed to muscling the teal speck into a middle lane from an on-ramp abreast scoffing semis and braking sports cars. But even amidst that today I was able to notice a disemboweled animal lying just where the slow lane merges.
Whenever I see the image of roadway carnage I brace myself; feel alone. A gentle amorphous part of me begs to resist further knowledge while something from almost the same place feels obligated, as if there is something to be gleaned. But what can be? An insight into the moment? A gesticulation languishing in the discarded body? Or maybe the satiation of a darker need. I hope not.

So there I find myself horrified, jostled about by traffic and unable to look away when I realize that this viscera is nylon batting oozing from a toy. And now there is no other place for my original emotion but aside that bear in the path of oncoming motorists.

Bound

On a long, slow Southern coast I settled in for a bus ride as the eager congestion of signage abated to homes, then farms. Resting my forehead against the air conditioned pane, rutted side roads permeated with a heat and stillness deeper than skin. Toiling from the city, stoplights stretched further apart as the vehicle’s groan from them became a tympanic hum. From beyond wool checkered seats two disembodied British voices happened.
I gathered that these friends were returning to Danville, a city not far from my own stop. As I listened they continued:
-If we’re meant to stay we’d best figure this out
-It seems more like something you’d best figure out
-I won’t be handing it off to you then
-I don’t see why not, you seem to be done with it
-Would you rifle through to dial the numbers and
contact all my girls?
-No…not all at once. I’d start where I was a weak fist
and a strong second
-You see, how can I trust you?
-With the contacts of women you stole from me?
-Jenny will not have it in the house
-Two valid passports stamped by agents of the Queen
-She’s the one
-Very page three
-I won’t have it
-Then let me…If you’re sworn to be done with them
-There’s a finality to it
-Or to your feelings for Jenny?
Here there was only the motor’s comment as we accelerated through a remote stop light. Well ahead, beyond the drivers shoulder in his recessed compartment, the bus’s curved tempered windshield heaved through humid cicada air as that tumbled around the rectangular body to succumb to a vacuum behind in a gentle serif.