You Saw Me In The Burn

My eyes drift up to the rearview mirror, catching glimpses of mascara caked lashes, eyes that are mine but have seen more than I can hold. In the backseat your eyes meet mine, your twin pigtails out of place on your aging face. Your jaw grinds, lips cracked, mascara cacked eyes mirroring my own. I hold your gaze, trying to see if there is anything left there. Removing the absurd blowpop from your cigarette wrinkled mouth, you keep hold of my gaze and say “you aren't supposed to be here."

Stark awareness shocks through me, the seatbelt across my shoulders suddenly feeling too tight, the jagged leather of the steering wheel cuts into my hands as my grip intensifies, my senses suddenly becoming aware of the sounds of the road beneath the tires, the smell of my skin so close but so far from my own perception. I'm suddenly aware of the existence of a body that I inhabit but cannot feel.

My eyes flick back to the road. Yellow lines passing in the corner of my vision, ahead I can see the hills blackened with the fires that tore through this corridor. What remains is sticks, standing straight among the starkness of the wilderness around them. Out of place, but somehow, here they are anyway. I think I smell your last smoked cigarette in my hair. I wonder if these trees burned down from a cigarette like the one you threw out miles back. Sometimes fires are natural, sometimes the destruction is of our own making, I wonder which this is. I wonder which I am.

My eyes flick to the rearview again, avoiding my own and seeking yours. Your head is turned, staring out at the blackness left behind, your frantically applied foundation is mixed in with the hair on the side of your cheek, laying the hairs deeper into the wrinkles of your skin. I wonder if you can feel it. I think that neither of us are supposed to be here, I wonder if anyone ever told you that. I start to tell you, but the words don’t come. I think the moment has passed. The lucidity I have never seen in you before seems to be gone again. I avert my eyes, worried that if you catch mine again you might not see me this time. I desperately, feverishly, need to stay the person you saw who isn't supposed to be here.

The trees begging to turn back to green, the black passing behind us, growing further as the bald tires turn on the pavement, the seat belt loosens, my grip relaxes. The miles ahead seem to have shifted, a destination unknown but a clarity that I have not yet arrived. My heeled foot tips slightly, toes pressing down on the gas- nudging myself towards the way out. I’m not completely gone yet, you saw her.