forever fields

So we’re not trapped on the 101, so we brake the car anytime 

we want. When it’s your turn to drive you pull over twenty minutes in, 

green-faced from the road stretching into the horizon. You believe 

picturing something magics it into existence, I’m just gullible enough 

to hope you’re right. With your cash I buy twenty dollars of strawberries 

from the fruit stand on the side of the road. The woman beside it says 

WE DON’T EARN ANYTHING charges us an extra three 

for parking outside her stall THE MARKET IS SATURATED — 

you tell her everything is, cross your arms all the way back to the car, 

refuse my berries. Find the market is full of love poems, write to me. 

I wouldn’t argue with you at twenty-five MPH, wouldn’t argue at eighty. 

There are other factors at play—my feet on the dash, your hand tapping 

at the wheel, flicking a strawberry stem out the window like a cigarette, 

and you like this, with your side glances, your eyes blooming gold light. 

Your breath coming easily with the horizon’s end, my fingers drenched 

in crimson mush. I hand you another you don’t want, you toss 

the embers out. The wind rolls. I’ve been straining to hear the ocean. 

It says everything I have to give is imperfect—you would argue silently, 

your eyes bright, your mouth half-opened. Don’t. We have so much to see.