In The Rearview

In The Rearview

To the car that follows me in the night: can you tell me why when the accidents have already happened—the rollover, the one beside the icy bridge, the time with my son in the backseat—why when I've watched tractor-trailer trucks loom past me as I sat in the sidecar, when lights dot every street corner and I feel free to hire a man with a tattooed face to build my wall, though he is often late or does not come at all and I have to pick him up because he has no license and I try to puzzle out his life, to find the crooks and bends that might match my own, even though it's been so long since I slid into the night envelope, the car pulling beside me no coach with white horses, or footman, or even gilded wheels, but I climbed inside anyway, needing a ride and when they pushed me down in the backseat and threatened to ruin me, that made me silent, almost compliant to the sour huffing and puffing, why does the fear still rise like grey fumes, why do your headlights hypnotize me, and why do I think when you come up behind me, when you slow as I turn up my driveway, that after all these years you have finally come to finish me?