Changing Tires

            In the time of Covid19

 

I am at the Subaru dealer waiting for new tires,

an alignment, an oil change and two recalls,

one on the passenger air bag, one on the rear springs.

I forgot my water bottle. I’m facing a highway

of semis and ambulances, sitting on the concrete steps

of the showroom under the canopy’s shiny Foresters,

Outbacks, Crosstreks and Ascents, all of us tethered

like patient horses. I run my pen over blue lines

with nothing to say, nothing to rev this moment,

not even my car. I listen to the constant hiss of brakes,

the cough and wheeze of traffic on the highway.

                          Just last month my brother died, and I drove

across Kansas and Iowa, wound through southern Minnesota

and across the Wisconsin cranberry bogs, but I was too late.

Our last conversation was on the phone. His last words

to me between struggling breaths were, I love you,

the first time he’s ever said that, but there were other ways

—teaching me to wrestle, gluing model car parts together,

teaching me to smoke behind the garage, to French inhale.

I followed him everywhere—up big hill, up big tree,

up into the garage rafters, into the clubhouse

that said No Girls Allowed. He reached his arm down

and pulled me in.

                         Do you have water? I ask the masked receptionist.

She backs away. I believe she will lunge for my ankles

if I don’t back up too, so I do, right out the door.

Lunch today will be hard boiled eggs and carrots. No Chipotle

or Olive Garden. No afternoon break in air conditioning

with guacamole or a fresh salad. Only my thirst

and a long road trip through high prairie—tumbleweed, sage—

on new tires. Perhaps I should have stayed home, kept

my mask on, worn disposable gloves. Perhaps I should’ve said,

I love you, way back when the grass was up to our knees.