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Causeway
by Earl Coleman

Starting out, I thought I was protecting her, her disappointed face, her skinny frame, against the hazards of the open road, my traffic with her frozen in the strobelights of our politics and poverty. The borders of our secret selves were always sealed against incursions, even in a friendly intercourse. I thought to steer some neutral passageway between ubiquitous red-hot hostilities and frost, assuming energies like ours could turn a thousand rpms, dispel the mist surrounding us. And off we went. She took the wheel from me and ran it ragged, her life… mine, unmindful of the dangers of the zigzag, breakneck, slippery pace, her face forever forward, hopeful. Rag top down, full speed ahead, tear-assing over continents. She raced whatever sun survived the blasting of her younger years. At what horizon line did she divine that I was not protecting her but only blocking out her source of light, eclipsing her? What drove her to the edge, when full-course in the hitching on our comet’s ride, she opted for the freedom to elope, this time from me, break bottlenecks, lunge over falls, hug other roads she thought would take her to the spice, the wheel and steering column totally in her command?I think I loved her but I never grasped which cloverleaves to take, and never mastered that perspective on the traffic patterns, plainly posted warnings of the mergings, starts and stops that lay ahead.