You were at Betty’s Eats
Your black hair reflected tacky blue walls
(two eggs and hash browns, please)
Your slender lips not quite tasting the too-sugary coffee
Your clear eyes not quite seeing the too-hot pavement of I-40.
Maybe you were seeing San Francisco’s bridge or twizzlers in green glass jars
(here’s ten in cash, the change is your tip).
Drive doesn’t describe what you did
(slow down! you’re gonna kill me! stop laughing, I’m serious!)
You ran out of gas
You took the wrong turn
You even hit the only dog in the entire state of New Mexico.
But you always ended up back on I-40
(somehow we were both still alive)
Always going west, west, west because some fool had you believing there was still a gold rush going on
You were my young, tender June,
My strong, fiery July,
My slowly burning August
And my fast-approaching September
I wanted you to be my October, my November, my entire calendar
I wanted you to be the notes scrawled in the margin,
overflowing from Monday the 15th to Tuesday the 16th because just one day wasn’t big enough to hold you.
What was I to you?
I made friendship out of the new flip-flops and halter tops I bought you when yours were too dirty to salvage (which was my fault entirely)
I saw love in our favorite candy
(yours was twizzlers and so was mine—I thought that was a sign spray-painted FOREVER).
I loved the way the Arizona tan looked on our entwined hands,
The way the Nevada sun sparkled on my ’76 Corvette
And the way your hair reflected forest-green when it did.
I even loved the way the California grass felt when we laid side-by-side in it
(you never rested your head on my chest).
I never dreamed that a bridge that wasn’t even golden or a man that didn’t even like candy could take you from me.
I didn’t realize until too late that
you only kissed me after I’d eaten twizzlers.