I've played with the seat belt too many times and now it's jammed. It's cutting into my belly so bad and I can't breathe sometimes.

When the suns out seeking retribution on the earth, when mama's fists are wrapped around the thick belt, when there's a dead body on a train track.

I can't breathe.

I'm clutching onto a saran wrapped cake with crumby fingers, all tangy and lemon creamed. I wipe a few off my skirt and onto the floor, hoping he doesn't notice. My knees are rattling with my bags in the back of his truck. Both windows are down. The road winds tugging my braids this way and that and the air wet like vapour stuck to my skin.

Here and there seem so far. And I know I can just, reach out and touch the sweat drippin off your shaven neck.

You wipe it with a torn white rag and I've missed an opportunity.

Everything's moving so fast. Everything's a peach yogurt blur mixed with metal'd car horns. I think I smell the sea. My eyes are out the window and rollin' in my head at the same time and that sun up there is dancing on the water, showing off its gold tap dancing shoes.

We're on a bridge now, and I can see the whole city behind the water. Brown clouds around it like its burning up in flames below. I've never been so far away from home.

But the air is easier out here. Comes in pairs of two, girls holding hands and skipping down the road in baby blue. Singing sweet songs, on a trail towards my chest.

Lungs, they are fillable I find. For so long they've taken in cutting board breaths. Closed their passages, refused to let anything in or out. They're braver out here. They can have the sea tasting air and not the one that smells like propane and bus rides.

I can breathe.

He starts hummin a tune that sounds as deep as oil wells and round as marbles. He rolls the song in the palm of his hand and swallows it down along with the heat. And there that sun goes again, doing tricks. It's twirling around his head like a long skirt on a skinny waist. I watch him and the atmosphere feels lighter. Seat belts loosened. Knees are still.

A child sticks her hand out of a car window for the first time; light clings to her skin as she coasts the free breeze.

It's funny, that girl's got a smile on her face but, that girl, she looks a damn lot like me.

—

See I told y'all it would get better.