Dust on the Dash

There are moments when all the senses become heightened and agitated, excited about what they perceive and time simply dissolves. At these moments a person can wander through all the lives one has lived and slippery memory hardens like polished agate.

In one of my final moments inside my car looking out of the windshield the huge, tumbling clouds allowed no sun to shine. The sky was seen through glass covered in drops from a recent and heavy rain, condensing light from the grays and white, cut with wires and poles. The scent of wet asphalt and tar rose from the parking lot in whirls of vapor.

It was in this damp warmth just such a moment came upon me and the interior of the car dissolves and reforms into car after car after car, ushering in memory after memory;

My father holding my bleeding wrist while driving me to the hospital after I had shattered a window in the back of the truck.

My sister simply falling out of the cab of another truck after her door had opened during a sharp turn. She was there, then not.

Wondering where my father had ‘put 500 dollars’ into the car before deciding a safe must sit in the floor where I now know the transmission was.

Getting stoned with a friend while parked in front of the downtown library listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks under golden autumn leaves lit by streetlamps.

The musty smell of sex, muscle cramps and feeling as if I were turning into a lawnmower, bicycle, or other awkward and bulky object.

Stiff with fear driving through a flashflood, a landslide, or misjudging the distance of oncoming traffic while passing on a desert stretch, nearly killing a friend and myself.

Crying alone after the death of a loved one, or hours spent reading, feet out the window.

That brand new chemical smell of a new rental car after signing an agreement I would not leave the State. My brother and I drove through at least five States and two countries.

As the moment falls away, in a final moment with a car I will soon retire, I look at the dust on the dash, the floor tossed with rolling papers, water bottles and dead lighters, a spider web made just that morning, and I will know I will always remember my dog resting her head on my shoulder while driving and all the laughter with friend or family at my side.