The glass didn’t blink back from the roadway like it did back home where it had been purposefully set into the asphalt to make matters shine. This wasn’t that kind of glass. This was windshield glass and the only time it shimmered was when the red siren light bounced into it.
Someone else, in another accident, in another time, asked how to decrease the smell of alcohol. And in those days I was full of those kinds of answers because my allegiance to sugary distillations. I knew this way. I knew that way. Now, seeing the glass in another way, picking it out of the other people, I didn’t have the heart to dial into that stuff. I smelled it. I smelled it like it had come from me.
An old guy stood writing everything down on a pad of paper in case he forgot. Names, license plates, which car he thought started everything, who was driving. I kept picking out the glass. With the advent of the bathing red lights, my job ended. I drifted into the coming night. Night tumbled in with the stealth. The hungry temperatures clung to everything, the fan blades, the churning lights behind me, the a/c units belching their exhaust.
Someone was listening to music. And I recognized the song. The singer had a bad car wreck himself and lost an eye. I couldn’t imagine any loss like that. Tremendous heartbreaking loss. Sound, and smell and sight. Oh, that last one would hurt the most. Trying to recall light for what it meant and what it was and how it tricked us all. What kind of fool I always am, this slave to light.
love this poetic, dense piece. wonderful.
(also love the reference to glassphalt, also a childhood favorite…)
That’s one of those things about home I treasure. Other things, not so much treasure. Glassphalt as you say, golden hour all its own. Thanks for the kind words…