When we broke down on the way to Maine
and decided we never needed anything more
than white lines to rest on.

When you told me to "drive"
I didn't know how far your meant.
I figured that we could get as 
far as Maine before they would stop
us at the border of Cananda. I assumed
they would search
our car because twenty-year-olds
are always hiding something about
socialism-- or maybe it was just the 
oranges we hid in the back seat
in an attempt to smuggle them across the 
to Quebec where we could be
the only citrus farmers there--
we'd brush morning sleet of each fruit
in the patient and shivering dawns of April.
No we didn't make it to Maine.
When you told me "drive"
I knew you didn't mind where we ended up
as long as it wasn't here so
I never thought about the car
catching fire and the whole cabin filling
up with smoke from the air conditoning vents
You shouting from
the back seat "Keep driving keep driving
we're almost there!"
I never got to ask you where you
meant or where you were thinking "there" was.
And so we pulled over and I asked
you if you knew which state it was.
I told you I thought we had been in Georgia
but you said that everything smelled like oranges
and the we had been traveling north so 
we couldn't be in Georgia again. You said
you thought it was Florida but that would
also be the wrong direction.
We settled that we had to be in Vermont
because neither of us knew anything 
about Vermont. I wished we had rescued
the oranges from the back seat
but you said we never needed them. You said
there was so much out there
and we spent the after noon
counting the number of 
golden cars that passed on the high way.
No one stopped to ask about the car
burning next to us or about flag
we had woven from tall grasses by night fall.
We took it down and used it for a blanket.
I asked if you thought we were stranded there--
like an island or a gas station but all you said was that
you had counted twelve gold cars
and that was not all that many.
I worried about you not wanting to leave.
I had wanted to go somewhere and vaguely wanted
to look at the ocean-- but as the decades
past we forgot about the smell of oranges
and learned to make jam and toast from wild berries
that you said looked like Jupiter or Neptune
in the palm of our hands.
We moved on to counting phases of the moon
rather than headlights and the car
burned until it was ashes. We picked out the orange
seeds and grew a tree.
The white lines marked the border between
us and the world that still used addresses.
Yes, we were picked up eventually.
They had seen the orange tree from home
and when they asked where we were going
you told them again "there"
and no one asked where "there" was--
we all knew it smelled like oranges.