one headlight

on the way home from picking out funerals
& reenacting them, we would count
the cars with one headlight out. 
stars spit teeth on the street. the highway
opened up to cornfield roads. everything smelled
like dandelions & hot breath. the counting
was a game to see who would
notice our cyclops nightmates first.
you would hit the car ceiling with a fist
to try & claim the monster. i never wanted
you to take me home. we were teenagers. you were
my first friend who got her license. i was always
too embarrassed to ask you to just
take me for a drive but when you offered 
i would drop anything i was doing to go. i wanted
to feel briefly like we had an escape plan. like
we could skip rehearsal & drive across
state lines to the nearest beach. become horseshoe crabs
& bathe in the moon. one of your windows didn't roll down
but we didn't care. we used that surface
as a makeshift whiteboard. wrote the initials
of crushes. sometimes we would stop at the turkey hill
just a block from my house. drank milkshakes
in the parking lot. you always beat me at our game.
you always found more headlights out
than me. our harvest of vacancies. your father
on the roof. my father out drinking from
a hole in the earth. we tried to stay out
as long as we could manage. inventing new
places to park & wait. the town got smaller.
we talked about how far we would move away 
when we graduated. once, on a night in august, 
you said, "sometimes i think of driving at night
with no headlights on at all."