Need a ride?
He’s drunk but I am cold, tired and not about to argue with myself. I get in, fasten my seatbelt, and pray to a god I’ve never seen. Fear makes me pious. I try to ignore his erratic driving focusing instead on the snow blowing against the headlights. I am grateful to be in this car, bourbon smell and all. I trance into the hyperspace dreamscape offered by the tunnels of illuminated snow. My eyelids relax, and I am dancing through visions. I am lying beneath six-foot ferns, birds filling my ears with symphony. I am deciphering the ancient language of flora from their subtle movements against my skin. I am swinging through the trees with my prehensile tail vaguely adhering to gravity. I can feel the jungle growing in my body. I breathe in the damp air and feel the life around me becoming me. I am awake.
Twenty years of New England winters couldn’t prepare me for waking in a snow- bank five hours after we crashed into it. He is gone and I could be anywhere from Minnesota to Wyoming. The wind outside is deafening. I want to get out but I can’t move my legs. I assume they are asleep but soon realize that they are frozen. Moving my arm seems possible yet it is stone or steel. I try to push the door but can only lean heavy against it. The dense snow turns my cries for help to whimpers.
The battery refuses to start the car. I slowly pull the lighter from my pocket and attempt to ignite some of the fast food bags and newspaper on the floor. I cannot will my thumb to work even such a simple tool. Tears freeze against my face.
My eyes relax, and I am dancing through visions. I am lying beneath six hemlocks, dogs barking conversations in the distance. I understand their sounds and ride them in the wind through the branches. Melodies calling me to follow and I do.