Sitting in my car, I wait
in a nostalgic place
gone dark.
Shrill cries of feral creatures echo through a quagmire of trees between my home and the parking lot where I sit, waiting and listening.
Something ill-timed yet familiar: the first car trickles in and pulls up a space from mine in the lot. I can hear its radio and wonder if the feral things can too. My doors are locked, key in the ignition. The second car pulls behind me, keeps its headlights on; the first car’s inside light is on; all my lights are off while I sit, waiting and wondering how long it will be, in the parking lot tonight.
People in hoods to slowly drift behind my car. One with a knife, one with a sythe, they will smash my window in and get me before I can get away. Maybe they are the creatures howling in the wood.
I’ve driven today, long and long for love and family and the last chance at a something in life that should have been memories come and gone, a time ago.
Years ago the world was simple, less wide. Things and people were closer, yet some things seemed far more vast than they were, or are. That was okay, too. Ultimately, the times I remember are recessed from my forefront, and the time that is, is what I’m here for, waiting to eventually find my bed and, eventually, to crash into covers, to rest until the night is done.
What I wait for in the parking lot is a group of people, sitting on a bus, yearning for home. These cars parked beside me wait with me. Here for them, we sit patiently in the dark.
Now, my sister and her class, riding on a school bus, pull into the lot after a long day competing in their choir. A tired, recessed teacher smiles at his students while they stroll from bus to starry sky, to their parents who’ve sat, waiting, in cars with the stereo on.
Driving to the parking lot had led me around corners where I’d been when I was there. I sat in the backseat with a date on a rainy day, drove to the house of someone who no longer calls me friend, and drove too fast once, nearly losing the wheel.
Tonight, a headlight of mine is busted, so I drove slow enough to feel the pavement, on back-roads I know well.
Earlier today, there’d been a room with a stage, an audience and voices. I was in clean clothes that’d felt slacked after a long drive. My sister’s class came up the sidesteps, filed into rows. They were statues, but when their teacher hummed a note and raised his hands, they sang.
Out in the hall after they’d finished, there were eyes rubbed from crying and lips held from pouting. They knew that performance wasn’t their best and were hollow from it. Absent spirits left hearts so exposed that all they could do was sit and watch the other choirs on TV, waiting until awards were over so they could get on the bus and get home. Some needed hugs, constructive criticism, or peanut butter cookies.
Eyes wiped, my sister’s class filed back into the concert hall and I knew my job was to follow them in. An announcer stood at the forefront of the stage, holding a microphone. Sitting, voices hushed as she asked us to stand, and holding her hands high, she swished them; together, everyone sang the national anthem and sat like it didn’t happen.
“In fifth place,” the announcer said. Then fourth place, and with each “place” a rejuvenated class birthed the stage with smiles and cheer.
“Third place,” she said, grinning. “Hood River Val—” Cheer exploded and my sister’s entire class stampeded to the stage—laughing, crying, screaming, they’d become themselves again, radiating life.
* * *
In the lot tonight, I get out of my car and stroll to the bus. A teacher is tired and proud; I tell him it’s beautiful he cares so much and go to hug my sister. We get in my car, and I turn the key.
“Good day?” I ask her.
“Good day,” she says.
We pull from the parking lot and wind through the woods, to our home, to rest.