Some Distant Past

She puts me out like a cigarette

then flicks me to the curb.

One last puff of smoke and I'm gone,

careening out the window at ninety-five--

thirty over, that's not so bad.

But you could count the ticks on the speedometer

like the lives that disappeared

from the wreckage and the swerves--a finger

or a mash fisted honk. It's all the same,

just another figure in the rearview.

And a figure could be anything--a white

laced lie or some homeless bum

she gave a dollar to. Maybe in the carnage

there was beauty, not so much that I could see--

I saw faces melting together,

forging a river into a distant past.

Some left behind forgotten world

that existed only in my mind.

"I think I'll join the Peace Corps," she rambles.

Instead she moved to Australia

and learned some foreign language no one

would understand. Came back with an accent

and a hiccup in her step,

but her eyes were still the same

across a game of beer pong and store bought

rotisserie chicken.

I played a song on a mix tape from another time;

she said she loved it--

but she never kissed that album

and whispered, "Thanks for making this."