Roadkill

She was right up my alley, but she was in someone else's car.... When I saw her, I was mesmerized. Standing like a deer in the highbeams, transfixed in awe and wonder at the light, never realizing as soon as I had stopped, I was roadkill, my muscles twitching as my blood jelled on the pavement beside me.

Ah, but if you had seen her you would understand. When she smiled, it was like daybreak on the interstate over long, rolling hills... a breath of springtime blowing in the open window ruffling your hair, making the last hundred miles seem not quite so bad, making you glad that you passed by the rest stop and the Snugglebye Motel to hang in there for the long haul.

Her eyes signaled me like beacons at a small country airstrip on a long, cross country flight. Piercing the fog of my existence. A fixed point in a night black as death.... Compelling me toward her, indicating a place to rest, refuel... change the plugs before I fly on. Oh, if I could have landed on her airfield.

The rest of her delights? She was the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon. The Great Planes and the Shenendoa Valley. I was California next to her Continental Divide and I couldn't stop shaking.... When she moved, she was as smooth as the Mississippi with the power of Niagara Falls. I was just a little grass shack in the tsunami of her presence and she blew me over like a house of cards in a hurricane.

And as I was falling, I noticed the man who was driving. The tinge of crazed fear dancing in the corner of his eye. He had the maniacal grin of Pecos Bill riding that tornado, knowing he may not be there for the long ride, but he was going to hang on and stay with it as long as he could, 'cause the saddle sure felt good when you were sitting there. I could see he wasn't going to let a guy like me unseat him. To him I was just some half-eaten sandwich from Burger Delite forgotten in the gutter, waiting for the rats to finish the job and the street-sweeper to clear away the wrapper in the morning. I was an empty bottle of MadDog 20, in a brown paper sack, not worth a second glance as he drove by with that fine bottle of cold duck....

I rolled as I hit the ground and huddled next to a dumpster as they passed. I watched the lights of his tail fins disappear into the night and breathed in the perfume of her exhaust.