Dreamers Like You

Heat gasps from the a/c whenever the car stops at a light
Lever the window down--living in the future, now--but the past...
Grass lines by the roadside smell sweet, smell of dusty import stores
That have been, of bound brooms, of sharp, gold-fringed decor

Sunlight wavers above the asphalt
Drive through a heat shimmer--
Not exactly a rainbow--

And this isn't a green land...it smells like packing and drying grass
Sweet as sugar on the edges of this melting roadway.

There are witches in the wisps from the side of the road
Wine-blue morning glories keeping the weed sheaves straight
Summer smells like this, the green heart of the season cut and bleeding
Hair drying in clumps while the witches creep in wisps and shimmers

The road summons what it will, huffs flight along the shoulder
Like coals just caught, hot air leaping and licking at the taste
Of spring drying like fruit leather on that open blacktop griddle

Through the mirage, where the liquid is like gas and sight
Is drunk and slides down the slick edges of things
That used to be transparent
Someone remembers glass is always slumping--

Or that's an urban legend.
And the witches? Climbing over the thinnest edge of the story
Where the window is cracked open and all the green sugar
Ghosts invite you to stop, to taste of yesterday's grass?

Well, the witches sweep the road clean
Of dreamers like you.

We've entered the season of baking in Texas, meaning the season in which the state would like to bake you, preferably in a handy parking lot that's been heating since 7 in the morning. This isn't quite part of the remembrances that I intended for this week, but it brushes up against them:  stores that I used to visit, car trips in which I'd watch for the mirages on the road ahead, and repeating stories you don't necessarily believe (does glass really slump over time? Is it constantly flowing, only super slowly?). 

-- Chrissa