The Windows are Frozen Shut

We barrel through the prairie autumn

in J's Chevy, taking in fields the color

of sepia photographs, leaves that skitter

over the asphalt roads of towns two seconds long:

Cyrus, Starbuck, little blips on a landscape

that mesmerizes, that draws faces closer

to windows all fogged up with breathing.

Last night we talked about death for hours.

L told us in a deadpan how he'd almost

killed a man who had threatened a girl,

how he'd stood in court at a burly 17, replaying

the scene, his anger and blow after blow,

and worst of all, the way people seemed

to recede from him, to whisper about him

as if he were part of some museum display.

See, this is the truth: When my grandma died,

I could feel myself becoming a horizon.

A view of the prairie in the crisp days of the year.

And as we barrel back through it from a day

on the town, we gasp at the silence of it. We claw

at the starless dark, gaze out beyond the glass.

“I’m not scared of death,” someone whispers. “It’s what

comes after that terrifies me.”