Sugardrunk

That night we got sugardrunk togetheroff ginger ale and laughed at nothing untilthe ghosts began to crawl along the train tracksand the barn ran out of oxygen so we stolethe shackles and left and ran far enoughfrom home that we were both lost amongone-way country roads which was whenthe fireflies distorted the reflection of yourcompass and all we could see was ourselvesand dissolving bursts of blood orange light.

You drove the Jeep until it spiraled outof control and I lost all feeling in the rightside of my face and you watched your sleeveof tattoos vanish into a clear sky withoutstars and I lost the pulse of the cricketsand the tops of my cheeks got burned byall of the wind, which was when I askedwhat would happen if you lost what is mostimportant to you and you told me that it waslong gone but I didn’t feel any more liberated.

The rocking chair sang a dreary lullabyand we wanted to believe that somebodyheld us in their arms but all we could feelwere the armrests of the Jeep and the gluebetween our nostrils and when we tried

to lift our heads we knew that more ginger alewould do us no good so we each drankanother two-liter bottle and cackled untilthe magnets fell off the fridge and the heatof the oven was but an unforgiving echo.