This is going to probably go down
as one of my legendary bad ideas,
but I think we should kill the headlights.

Kill the mood we’re planning to greet by dawn.
Kill the expectation that someone with a thick-skinned heart
and a baseball bat is going to come out
of the first gas station that we stop at.

Kill our science of paranoia
that tells us cheerleaders a long way from home
and stoned conmen are going to be throwing thumbtacks
into the street,
as we drive on to our date with ten thousand small earthquakes.

The Jamaican fortune teller outside that great, bruised apartment building,
the one where new friends were getting together to take their clothes off
and play Mario Kart,
told us that after we moved we were going to get real sick
of being alive real fast.

She left the burden of a vibrant scar on your palm,
when you asked her if there was anything we could do
to survive the weather and occasional downpour of streetlights.

You still don’t seem too worried about it,
but then again you’ve told me before
that you would rather go through your parents’ divorce again
than ever visit a hospital.

I get that. I get you. I didn’t set out to do this.
Something tells me it might have happened
when we finally trusted the mysteries
of being quiet together for a whole hour.

Or it just might have been that time
you lied so poorly about being sorry your hand
needed to rest on my knee.

Love and lust tend to slap me around
at about the same moment,
but I had a good feeling when I went a whole day
without telling the church bells that play on repeat at the drive-in to shut up.

And then I found out that we both missed
the movies they used to play there
with the same childish urgency.

And then I found out you knew how to pack
a bag in the time it takes someone to be smug
and sarcastic about love conquering all.

The stars may not literally shine in your eyes,
but I’ll trust whatever is telling me
that they can be persuaded to try.

We might regret cutting the headlights.

Or we might be just fine.
Until the city of gold shows us casinos,
wax museums, court houses and pharmacies
as far as the eye can see.

10/08/2012

Posted on 10/08/2012
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard