drive-in theater

on the screen plays a home movie 
of me jumping off the roof.
this never happened or maybe it did
& i poured my memory into 
jelly jars again. i'm sitting with my uncle
& he talks like the past is an ice cream machine.
pumping swirls of "before before before."
"everything used to be..." he says like a litany. 
he wears a little theater curtain 
on his face. i ask him if he has a video
of himself jumping from a roof.
he does not. he tells me to be quiet
even though the sound on the movie 
is not working. he has told me
about the drive-ins many times. you used 
to put the speaker inside the car.
the movie made intimate. a voice
whispering into the cabin. i invent my own
sound track. it is all strings. horse hair.
horses running until their bodies are dust.
a horror movie in which i am both
the rubber monster & the running girls. 
he watches the glow like his life depends on it.
maybe it does. maybe our nostalgia 
is more than just a luxury organ. 
instead, maybe it is what we use 
to believe, "it could be like this again."
there is no one else at all at the drive-in.
it is just me & him. the thing about
this theater is no two people
see the same thing on the screen.
he is smiling with his tombstone teeth.
to him, the film is of something lemon-flavored.
a hard candy night. he does not
tell me what he sees when he looks.
likewise, i do not tell him what i see.
we let each other finish the movie.
what else could we do?