Shrapnel, Saskatchewan

Now that the middle of the night, pitch black, pouring rain, 140km/hour semi truck madness had passed without serious incident, the rising sun acted as a beacon, beckoning the travelers back across the Canadian prairie expanse towards home. The words she said rattled inside his head like shrapnel; pieces of glass and metal, nickels and dimes, nuts and bolts and screws and old car keys scraping up against the inside. He still smelt like cheap booze and even cheaper cigarettes and he thought about her sleeping, curled up under her covers six hundred kilometres behind him. They were somewhere between cities and the radio wasn't picking up much so he clicked it off and opened the window instead to listen to the morning instead. His two friends, nestled in the back seat and the passenger's seat respectively, both shifted but kept their eyes shut and continued to doze. He put his arm on the windowsill and thought of a piano riff, red lines on map, driving around in circles in parking lots, lost opportunities and lost words and the loss of her soft hair and soft voice to a growing distance. The rearview mirror exposed bagged eyes and a darkness retreating across the skyline and with the pedal to the floor they were heading home to where the taxes are higher and the people don't age well, heading home to all the people he knows and all the people he doesn't want to see and all the people who tend to plow through life at a lonely pace and will never have songs written about them. The sun beckons them home like a Siren and shrapnel litters the road and their thoughts and cuts like razorblades into their every misconception and doubt and belief.


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