The sky wears power lines and neon signs like a necklace. I’m down at the liquor store on the corner where you bought the cock ring. Half joking, half trying. Tearing down streets clutching my leg. Screaming into my face. Woman! I’d like to cower into your grip again. I want to see inside you. Scream back into yours. I’ve never seen nothing like you!

Once I learned how to drive, I realized that you can’t smell salt in the air anymore. Just smog and tires burning. And sometimes tires burning smells like beer and sometimes beer smells like tires burning. Like Tecate and gasoline.

I’m holding my hips and giving myself a kiss from you. It’s a consolation prize handed out in the empty parking lot tonight. My lips meet the air, and I think maybe it’s enough to pretend I’m still in your car. My shadow is a stranger like you, unfolded below me. Watching me and looking up my skirt. We’re both swaying to the beat tonight, letting cool air touch us. You’re in your house, alone, listening to music without me. And I’m casting your shadow on the boulevard.

I’m finding new ways to say your name. Softly and loudly. Until I’m screaming.
Whispering you into the bottles on the shelf. Tracing you in oil on my body. Carving you into little things. Matchsticks and candles. I’m gonna have to drive across the country and back to get over you. Over the heartlands, in hopes of leaving you behind somewhere. I wasn’t even really yours and you still owned me. Owning someone without knowing it is sick. I’m stolen goods. I’m disgusting. I’ve been around the block one too many times. Now all I have is asphalt.

I’m young and I’m trying to outrun my restlessness. There’s all this shit in the backseat. I could slam on the breaks and let it crash into me. I could fly off the side of the canyon and watch it soar.

I’m taking the off ramp by your place. Just waiting for the red light to turn. For the little green wheels to follow me home. Annabel’s song is playing in my car and she’s singing about somebody else I used to love. My foot is heavy on the pedal and now I’m really flying. I’m meditating on the road. Just for today, I don’t look back.

The loop never ends. You can’t break it. You could never be home. You could never kiss me tender like the others do, like when we say hello.

But they don’t got what you got, baby. You got me.

Ginger Jones is a poet from California.