Hector, bloody on the highway by Take-ApartxYour-Head, literature
Literature
Hector, bloody on the highway
I would understand this better if I
remembered
standing outside, hanging onto your left hand
through a cleft in the window,
as you flicked the ignition
(headlights searing)
and sped
off mouthing those smooth songs I know
in order,
because I feel like I have been dragged well past
state lines in this very way—
yet the funny thing is that I
only remember
what really happened—I
remember
sitting inside, your right hand in my lap.
I was safe
in the passenger seat.
Whenever I see you
I smirk at the thought of
the tempo of
your hot breathing: I remember
the night when
I owned you
without even trying.
But you are nothing more to me than
a linty pea coat hung in the closet
and the closest you came to meaning something
happened back when we shared its pocket: back when
I could see your breath rise on a January night, back when
you owned me
without even trying.
I am knitting a sad white scarf
and sipping Earl Grey,
remembering the old times
in that cold, damp basement space
where a skeleton with that very tea’s name
watched us
fret over each other,
as we were half-avoiding, half-
let’s just say we were more afraid of each other
than we were of the dark—more afraid of each other
than those shaking people were of us, as they
passed
by
your clapping doors
and my mental musical.