Go

By J. L. Woodward

I wanna get in my car and drive.

I-5-straight-open-get-the-fuck-outta-town drive.

Set the cruise control,

passenger seat full of cassette tapes,

window open blowing my hair

and the stereo cranked louder than the wind drive.

Secure in my private, contained, car-space,

all by myself,

free of everyone and all the shit drive.

I wanna drive.

I wanna drive like it’s 1995.

Like I’ve just completed five years

stranded/incarcerated in BFE

and have just been given my first car.

Drive like I’m high on the freedom

and can’t refrain myself.

Just gotta go.

The prison door flung open

and I’m going.

Don’t care where.

Going just for the joy of going.

Driving.

I wanna drive like I'm running to a lover.

So hot with desire

that I'll burn to ashes

if I don't get to her.

A desperate race against my need.

I wanna drive like I don’t care.

I don’t care that she’s stood me up

and there’s a note to another woman

on her front door.

I don’t care that the next woman

tells me I’d be perfect

if I were a man.

She wants my attention

more than she wants me.

I don’t care if I don’t sober up.

I wanna drive to escape all the crap.

The bad day at work.  The routine of work.

On the road, nothing matters.

Driving so fast, the crap can’t chase me.

So I push the gas pedal harder

and turn the volume knob up.

I’m just hurling myself through the world.

All the freeways are endless possibilities.

Ribbons connecting everywhere,

Connecting nowhere.

They go, and so can I.

Throwing myself after asphalt in an endless pursuit of motion.

My heart races sitting still in my car

like my body’s running this race to freedom.

Arms, legs, eyes, shoulders, back all engaged.

And I run leaping strides

running for hours without getting winded,

without getting tired.

I wanna drive like running the marathon.

I wanna drive like I’m racing the clouds,

making earth and sky one.

No boundaries.

Gravity can’t hold me.

Wind, sky, clouds rip trough open windows,

through hair, ears, eyes, self.  All one.

Dust kicking up bringing earth to sky.

And I’m in the dirt,

I’m in the sky.

Driving like I’m the clouds racing the wind.

I wanna drive.

Fuck alarm clocks, work schedules, rent and bills.

Throw myself to the world and fly.

J. L. Woodward only dabbles occasionally in poetry, but must always be making something. She lives with her spouse, their two cats, and her yarn stash in a cozy Boston home.