Noor Zamamiri

little turtle

Gina Trejo

There’s a dread that overcomes me in the last thirty pages of a good book. And when I see the muted green-blue of old glass. And when I reach the border of my neighborhood on a long walk. And when I lay my head down, ready to talk the night away with my love, but sleep interjects my every other thought. I adore the beginnings of those times, deeply rooted in the end of the middle. But the coattails of those times mark the end. Where they start in the bliss of no conflict, they turn over and show me what can come next. Like a touch-screen menu at a fast-food restaurant, it asks if I want to feel the next consequence in ten minutes or ten hours. It says that I can’t be living a human life without the next problem inching its way toward me. A no-standing zone on the edge of a cliff. “Ole Faithful” is what I call this purgatory-like time. Except that it’s backwards, not like getting into heaven, but like an old car. It got me this far, Ole Faithful did. Its slick leather seats and fresh steel-blue paint job drove me two-hundred-thousand miles and gave me countless memories. My first parking ticket. The loss of my car virginity. The last time I saw home before it was torn down. And right in that moment when the engine is purring, cooing at me with love songs, and when the leather has folded itself and knelt at the curves of my thighs, I see the check engine light come on. It had to happen, but did it have to happen to Ole Faithful? It had to happen at some point, but why when this momentary bliss just pressed its lips to my cheek? Before I can even feel the puckering of that kiss and hear the snap of love on my face, it all melts away and a problem takes root. Like a weed, the problem doesn’t let me think of what I just lost, but how to fix what’s at hand. A no-turning back zone, a “be happy you’re alive to even start a new book, look at more glass, go on a new walk, or lay down to sleep assuming the first thing you’ll see in the morning is your love’s face waiting to feel it all again with you” zone. I dread the moment where I step back and see all those forces swirling around me before I am sucked back in to living.