︱tape: 06 - faded glimmers cast figures on the windshield︱

banner flags drooped on clotheslines tied to multi headed street lamps that looked like silver palm trees whose leaves must have glowed by night into ghostly boughs at the used car yard where i would buy my first car for my 17th birthday that promised the whole world through a greasy windshield. balloons tied to dull impalas, highlighter pink signs with four-digit prices propped up on windshields yet one of the cars, a datsun 240z lacked this pomp with only a price written in marker. the roof slung back sloping over the raised rear wheel well like one of those european sports cars from twenty years ago. fuselage fender panels extended until they scooped out the circular headlamps where the hood peers over a bumper laced in a chrome lip. from the interior, the hood stretches a blue horizon as my foot fell onto the pedal to roar down colfax avenue unbounded as the engine moves various garages and motels down the street all being potential places to stop and yet what other city lights and hidden forests would appear on this concrete earth, even the fast food restaurant that once took 5 minutes to walk to at lunch time flies past with late shift workers wiping the parasol tables outside now shrinking into these amorphous buildings beside me where the car might orbit around until settling into crumbling brick and polished shop windows with dioramas of vacations behind mountainous backgrounds .at night, the hood dims and i turn on the headlamps pouring light beams from their scoops onto the rocks glittering out of the blurring concrete whose roadside flecked with branches as if the nerve endings of a darkness the car’s lights staved away .

high school was coming to an end, and the sunsets lingered while they slipped away to tomorrows before graduation. we listened to our principal’s speech, sometimes finding a moment to poke each other causing stifled giggles in the audience and the whispers of old jokes and witticisms; the sudden stutter of his words and drawl off the page on the podium failed to incite any hint of a place to go after we separated from these halls into those vague backgrounds we were heading as we might tell each other we ought to meet again somewhere in some fashionable downtown.

“should we do anything after this?” emily turns to whisper.

“how about we double to one of those late-night fast food joints? you got the car, right?” neal suggests.

“but we all went there to eat after exams anyway,”

“do you think malcolm still has a curfew?” emily giggles.

afterward, we left the pale high school in an overcast where our black gowns fluttered, clinging to our necks as the hillside from the entrance began to mean little, as little as the numerous buildings and garages in the distance now becoming indistinct as we leave the building behind.