Mountain Country

I've always missed the mountains, but I didn't know it until I saw them.

I say this and you're laughing and her hair is flying everywhere. She is there, always there and her head seems impossible, it doesn't belong. Things like that do not belong; they are not part of the show. I turn around and offer her gum and I sense your hands tightening on the wheel, your jaw tensing, and if I look I know I'll see that tiny muscle flickering there, like a hummingbird heart.

I'm looking down, though, down, at your melon stomach taut against tiny round buttons and cheap cotton; I imagine your bland penis nestled beneath, pale and soft, a baby bird, needy and small. She bites hard on the gum, and you, attentive to the rearview, flinch. Her lips are red, her hair is everywhere, she bites down, and you flinch. It's all there.

The program has changed and I don't know my part and you tell me, three hours, three hours, and we're out of mountain country. I bare my teeth.