2004 Volkswagen Touareg
By Avery Letendre
(Mentor Text: “Worm” by Gail McConnell)
The Denver roads are dark tonight, streetlights beaming through the black
only broken by water beads streaking past to splatter, and your own sleek black shape
rumbling through it all to round the bend, slowing and speeding
in sharp succession, rain-slick asphalt and the summer’s exhaust fumes falling behind.
Dashboard littered with collections, recollections,
you protect the trove of every sort of treasure from every traveled road.
Dusty rubber ducks in an even line. Crumbling mica chips still glittery in sunlight.
Plastic purple sunglasses gifted unasked, muddy old cupholder rag poking out,
car camping light strands wound around the grab handles—reminders of each remembered route.
Your engine thrums lowly, humming to the one-station radio all the while.
Cruising ‘round the corner,
your windows reflect all the ghosts of passengers past,
all the memories you’ll protect most, the promises that nights like tonight will last.
Pulling to a stop along the leaf-strewn gutter, you relax into a conference
of seventeen-year-olds, Thai leftovers and laughter, and provide a home for what you can
keep forever: wild smiles, secrets shared in kind, undefined but held together.
Your windshield shimmers with raindrops,
your wipers squeak sweetly across them. How teenagers giggle
and gossip as they never will again. You, an oddly maternal pile of metal
have seen us through it all
and allowed us to forget that even you aren’t permanent. The road ahead
is riddled with bends.
The Trinity Review 