All the dead truckers from the pileup on the highway gathered around the afterlife elm to proclaim their retroactive innocence. We had heaven’s mist in our eyes, they said, and couldn’t see a damn thing but angels in the brake lights and rest stops rich with whiskey. Tell our mothers goodbye and tell the kids we’re sorry.
We granted their wishes. We touched our vacant wombs and whispered condolences filled with stanzas and flute notes. They were our fathers, too. Highways were their church with asphalt pews, bridges their altars. When they drove their rigs through towns, children waved and pledged to seek the long road of commerce when their childhood storms ended.
We carried talismans made of sticks and voodoo dolls to shake our lament at atmospheric forces that rained this death on our brothers. Their Kenworths jackknifed in the mist and bridged the gaps between parent and orphan. We thought to give blame to the elders of our people but hadn’t the strength to fight the tumors in their tongues. We stood in the breakdown lane, weeping thorns and roses.
When ambulances fled back to the morgue, we knelt in wet gravel and asked forgiveness for our trespass. With a desperate wish to see our sons again, we looked to the horizon. It showed us only highway stripes that stretched past the roadside waste and the mile markers into a long, laughless future without them.
About the Author
Victor D Sandiego, once from the big city west coast of the United States, now writes his odd time compositions from his home on the edge of ex-pat society in a small town. He is the founder and editor of Dog Throat Journal. His work appears in various journals and anthologies, and is upcoming in Bull and others.
