Drive to the Airport

Toothlike static prickling car speakers
chattering radio stations touching
dark places between talking and singing

Radiant songs stripped to metallic waves
tangled electric wires I must fix
with my father's rusted silver wrenches

You push your black suitcase into the trunk
colorless traffic lights swaying ahead

I remember everything beautiful
when I see how sharp your body has become
gray wool coat sinking into your stomach

I remember pressing two perfect leaves
over your eyes at the end of summer
when you laid back and said I am dying

I don't know what I hit but suddenly
my dashboard dips down slightly crooked

Leaning heavily into injuries
halfway invisible lacerations
underneath shaking metal engine parts

Finally my tires roll over glass
burns off smoking and dragging its pieces
across four lanes of blurring automobiles

The first thing I love about new fire:
its blossoming orange center consuming
whatever object it desires first

Eating and kissing the skeleton's edge
calmly before its appetite erupts
and then stillness, cool as medicine shot

Through an IV into the arm's soft curve
the press of memory turning over
renaming the unnameable feeling.
Madeline Barnes is working toward a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College in Ireland. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a Bachelor's degree in Creative Writing and Fine Arts in 2012. Her work has appeared in places like Pleiades, The Loyalhanna Review, and The Rattling Wall.