In the backseat of your car, I try to point out all the passing landmarks
like the games of travel Bingo we used to play when we were children.
When we reach Lake Tahoe five minutes after midnight, the moon
is burning brighter than a flashbulb. You’ve arranged a picnic,
but instead of eating cucumber and watercress sandwiches
with the crusts cut off, we eat our sadness instead.
It goes down slimy and wet as a whole egg yolk;
gets stuck in my throat like an unsaid apology
until you reach over and clear my windpipe with your fingers.
At the reststop on the edge of town the neon lights illuminate
an old man sitting on a porchswing on his front steps,
holding a sign that says Five dollars to tell me what you’re lonely
for. The wind wraps around your body like a second skin;
you offer to go over there and tell him about the time
when you were three and your father drove off without you,
leaving you in the frozen aisle at the grocery store by yourself,
eggs and yogurt still overflowing from the cart.
But I tell you no; it’s late and we’ve got to be heading home,
and it’s only later that I think to wonder
whether we were supposed to pay that man five dollars
for our loneliness,
or whether he’d give it back to us for free.