Rental Car | Teen Ink

Rental Car

April 18, 2021
By Lydiaq ELITE, Somonauk, Illinois
Lydiaq ELITE, Somonauk, Illinois
172 articles 54 photos 1026 comments

Favorite Quote:
The universe must be a teenage girl. So much darkness, so many stars.
--me


It’s a sound so deep and wide and close by,

 far away and annoying and sweet,

 indistinct and ethereal and ceaseless—

my nine-year-old brother’s singing toy caterpillar

in a backseat

on a black night of shining seatbelts.

 

It’s coming, tinkling down reality,

 ten hours on the road.

The sky is turning. The earth is churning.

 Time is like the batteries in the toy caterpillar—

growing fainter and dying.

There’s a fireball sun above the Ohio River,

 filling up the sky with water vapor and loneliness.

 

Huddled against me, sleeping,

 like a rock in troubled waters, lies my brother.

The hills, the Wee-Sing Hills,

 sweep us like music up and down a staff.

When he has drunk up too many juice boxes,

let him outside to throw up.

When Mother is lost on the winding road,

cry out to God.

And the years I spent staring out car windows

at the black drum of night,

they’ve all dissolved, like Crystal Lite tea powder into water.

What name do you put to the starry feeling of night travel?

What words can you use to describe traveling with brothers?

 

Now we all have junk rooms inside us.

They’re full of decaying action figures,

 yellow magazines, and cat-soiled fabric.

We lock and bolt those doors,

 press our back against them.

Nobody can come in.

Uncertainty and mystery and purposelessness

can drive you harder than knowing all the answers.

 

There’s a tide in you, deep inside of you.

 Alive and singing,

hot as an oven, a dolphin and a shark,

 a spirit meant for eternity

 and begging for release, for peace.

 

Look around you at the misty river,

and run with the children down the bank.

 The jar of laughing is never filled up.

The sky can sing you a lullaby,

if you lay down and let it.


The author's comments:

This is inspired by a 1976 song called The Fuse from The Pretender album.


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 1 comment.


on Apr. 20 2021 at 6:24 pm
SparrowSun ELITE, X, Vermont
200 articles 23 photos 1053 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It Will Be Good." (complicated semi-spiritual emotional story.)

"Upon his bench the pieces lay
As if an artwork on display
Of gears and hands
And wire-thin bands
That glisten in dim candle play." -Janice T., Clockwork[love that poem, dont know why, im not steampunk]

fireball sun... if my English teacher got ahold of that he might get so excited he'd have a heart attack and die, and you'd be charged with murder be careful with amazing, beautiful langue...(;