Habitual

There’s a rhythm to my car,

a hum to it, beneath the rumble of the engine,

the way it kind of growls and grumbles,

irritable

because it has to move.

The seats are large and comfortable, cradles

for twenty-year-old bodies,

the college kids curling up and hunching,

smoking joints limp in our fingers.

We named it ‘The Beast,’ all capitals, just like that,

because it’s big, wide, beaten and mangy,

beastly to look at as it growls, deep in its throat.

I love the nostalgia of it, all the memories of shivering

late at night, when it’s thirteen degrees out, until

my fingers tremble so badly that I can barely

raise my cigarette to my lips.

All the cops that have passed us by: four girls

getting high

in a beater car don’t look like they are,

so we get away with it. Every time.

Every drive-through window, or tollbooth, or ATM

I’ve driven up to, when the window won’t open

more than an inch,

and there’s me, hiding my laughter with

an apologetic smile and vaguely amused explanation.

It’s just as funny as it was the first time, really.

Or the antenna, the way it got so bent up when I hit that

traffic cone, (also funny, the way it launched across

the empty highway lanes) that I had to replace it with

copper wire, with a curly-cue on the end.

It’s not just my car anymore, it belongs to the group,

to the bunch of us,

shouting chaotic and caustic, the cacophony of youth.

We have a strange mingling, a way of sliding off of each other

until things are right again, a dependence that’s harder than drugs.

Its beautiful, really, the grungy kids piled into the ugly car,

and underneath the growling,

I can hear the Beast purring, too.