"Mojave" by Candace Cavanaugh

He gave up looking for a town, gas station, or house off a road or driveway The desert unfolded further than his eyes could see. In the stillness, the ground spread in glare, broken only by shrubs now and then. A swell of dunes lay below a jut of mountain range bulking up from beneath the surface. They were told it could take hours to traverse this section. That they should have a full tank, a functioning radiator, and plenty of liquids. No warning was offered about the middle hours of the day. Notions of night, coolness, and breeze were charred in the afternoon glare. They were not told their mouths would stop moving, their minds would stop seeking the right words, that their hearts would contract, twist, and burrow away from the blistering air, the closeness of the car, of each other. The road snaked a path past shoulders of rock. A ground squirrel foraged, darted between weeds and creosote bushes. He kept his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the cut of the road. Driving on even though he could sense her wanting to stop. He knew she’d climb from the car, step away, wait. She’d identify creatures, absorb them, witness their edgy movement into and out of the earth. Not yet. It was a prayer. Not yet. Once they got through this part they’d be okay, his mind promised. Just get through the jaws of the afternoon. They weren’t alone on the road. Not the way they were alone beside each other. The sporadic sight of another car or a truck jarred small blooms of hope inside him. They could do this. It could be done. They weren’t forsaken. Look - that couple is perfect, aren’t they? She’s laughing, his smile is huge. Windows down, faces open to the day. He steered through the chemistry of metal, fuel, and the razored wills of fragile-skinned humans. They pressed through the brittle air, the stunned expanse of earth, the endless heave of sluggish planet. He heard the tires beneath them, the hum of their dull frenzy. He wished now that they hadn’t been in such a rush to leave. That they had waited a few days, weeks, even hours. Waited for the heat to disintegrate into twilight. They could have eased through the morning, napped in the building temperature, made off at dusk. They could have taken turns at the wheel, slept in shifts, found refuge under the star-punctured night. They could have stayed oblivious to the teeth of mid-day, missed the blast of mute terrain, slipped past the bully of stark beauty. They may have evaded the simmer of their silence, the taunting of their minds, the stunning of their chary hearts. ————————————– Candace Cavanaugh called us from Desert Edge, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems twitter.com/voicemailpoems instagram.com/voicemailpoems