The driver
by Peter Leroe-Muñoz
The purple convertible halved the dirt lane next to grandma’s yard like a shark fin in a sandbox.
Bare feet carried me to the gap where I often stuck my head between the pickets after rain and watched the swirl of trapped worms drowning in tire track puddles.
Through the dust I saw a blond ponytail jangling in the only occupied seat. Sunglasses reflected each passing power pole, the distance growing between them, the last tilting west, like a shadow finger pointing to the road’s end a quarter mile out of sight.
Just past our yard she flung out an arm, a straight wing with chipped red nails tracing each hill and valley of rushing air. The back wheels grounded and the hood lifted. At the lip of one rut, the car almost seemed to rise, as though breaking that promise to obey always and forever gravity’s divine privilege.
I turned my head and waited for her to return when she came to the end of our one-way.
Sometime later, the clouds turned warm pink and the moon glazed our empty walnut tree. I almost didn’t notice when Grandma’s hand settled on my shoulder. We turned back to the house, now a lamp-lit row of greasy windows, rusted screen doors and starched laundry to be folded.
Peter Leroe-Muñoz’s previous work has been published by Modern Haiku, The Rumen, The Fool’s World, Mangrove Review and Asahi Shimbun in Japan.