In the front seats: he and I.

In the glove compartment: proof of insurance, registration, owner’s manual, and road maps.

In the backseat:  Our backpacks, a tissue box and a blue cooler with water bottles and perishable snacks.

and in the trunk: a small duffle bag with my Sony Voice recorder, headphones, cables, and extra batteries. A large Porta-Brace organizer for his collapsible boom pole, mic, headphones, cables, zeppelin and dead-cat windshield.

Also: two small suitcases with our clothes and seven boxes.

 

 

 

 

***

 

What happened next?

What do you mean?

 

nothing

 

***

 

We also accumulated things: plants, plates, books, chairs. We picked-up objects from curbsides in affluent neighborhoods. It’s never clear what turns a space into a home, and life-project into a life.

At some point, we begun to drift apart on other ways. I guess we -or perhaps just I- had made the common mistake of thinking that marriage was a pact of two people willing to be the guardians of each other’s solitude. If we mapped our lives back in the city, if we drew a map of the daily circuits and routines the two of us left behind, it would  look nothing like the route map we will now follow. When we were in better spirits, we were able to joke about our differences

 

***

 

Unhappiness grows slowly.

for now, there's a bridge connecting us

It lingers inside you, silently, surreptitiously.

Be careful

Who are we missing?

 

***

 

Almost every day, we drive, and drive some more, listening to and sometimes recording sounds stretched out across this vast territory, sounds intersecting with us, stories overlaid on a land- scape that uncoils, the landscape always flatter, drier. We've been driving for more than three weeks now, though at times it seems like it was just a few days ago that we left our apartment; and at other times, like right now, it seems like we left a lifetime ago, the two of us already very different from the persons we were before we began this trip. I ask him now what he's thinking and wait for an answer, studying his lips. They're dry, and chapped, and could be kissed. He thinks a little, wets his lips with the tip of his tongue:

Nothing, he says.

 

***

but, what there was, between us, was silence.

***

I lost your map

***

But I think in the end, it was impossible for us. Not because we didn't like each other but because our plans were too different.

***

Today, at sunrise, I will wake up and leave.

​