By Erica Naone (LadyFebruary@yahoo.com)
Date: 4 July 1999

Road Trip

Riding beside you in your new blue Geo Metro, even though we haven't seen each other
I still feel dried saliva gumming my lips shut.
You ask me why I'm silent and I tell you I'm used to it now,
As if now is a year away from last Sunday.
I notice we're on American Ex-Prisoners of War highway, which seems like a strange
Way to notice a dark place.

I make you buy me a pack of cigarettes before we get to the show,
Maybe because you don't like me smoking,
And I smoke a few in line, but I turn my head from you when I do this.
We get in the club.  I stand up.  You sit down.
I keep my hand on your hand like you're the seeing eye dog holding me up.
I want to get out of here now.  If I said I was leaving,
Would you let me walk alone down Chinatown streets to the car
In the parking lot that's $5.50 a shot for a space too small for us to sleep in?

I lose track of you going out the door.
You catch up to me.  I feel your sweat oozing through my shirt
And your breath sliding through my ears.
We get out to the car.  We drink warm water and spit it out.  It reminds me
Of being drunk.  I quit drinking because I didn't think you liked taking 
Care of me while I puked.  I light up again and sit on the bumper.
I don't trust my weight to the hood which crinkles ominously,
Not hot and solid like your old car.
I hunch over and you're somewhere behind me, the guardian angel
I don't quite believe in.  Your fingers on my elbow, you whisper,
"Girl, you're never there anymore."
"Whaddaya you mean?  I'm never where?"  No answer.
I walk all the way across the parking lot to a trash bag,
Not wanting to drop a cigarette butt in this already dirty place.
"Let's go," I say.

On the highway, I start to sing, "Letter to a John,"
And then just my own songs.
The tape player's broken.  We take turns singing to lighten the mood.