Dead air

While you’re driving my car, I wish you’d tell me the story of how we met.

I think about when you used to drive it even though you didn’t have a license yet, and I’d only had mine for two months. But I still let you do it.

And I think about when I was afraid to drive all the way to the lake. You’d draw a heart on the fogged-up window and tell me not to.

And now, while you drive, we don’t say a damn to each other because there’s nothing left to say.

It feels so strange, but so real at the same time, that the only thing bringing us together now is someone else’s death.

And I think that when everyone starts their lives again after the funeral. We will too.

I feel my mouth filling with honey.

Chestnut honey. Thick. Bitter.

So I look straight ahead.

I watch the road and the trees running backward, and the radio talking about a car crash on the Milan–Turin highway.

I lean toward you – I take the wheel – I turn it hard and neither of us screams when we hit the guardrail and crack our skulls open.