Roadtrip - Iris Cai
Traveling the interstate: six hundred miles
of gravel-kissed coastline, the car wheels
salted by sea spray. Bob Dylan static
on the radio, singing about highways and
a regret buried so deep, it grew into poppies
on the mountainside. You mistook them
for embers, every hill scorched into
a writhing face. But it wasn’t
wildfire season, only July. Skyline
blue enough to dye into denim, the sun
glittering like fool’s gold, a pocket-sized dream.
And you. Driving out here all alone, learning
careful deconstruction by the burger joint.
The sooted car pipe and its hacking cough,
how easily the gears fit each other’s touch.
Because that’s what you only ever wanted
to be. Holdable. Look out the window:
there are no seagulls mocking you today.
Even California frays at its edges when swept
enough in the water’s embrace. You are
not big enough to steal the moon, but
when the night tilts just right, it, too, becomes
a small infinity. Just enough.
Iris Cai is a junior from the SF Bay Area. Her poetry has been recognized by YoungArts, Poetry Society of America, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and is published in or forthcoming from On the Seawall, Neologism Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, she is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Eucalyptus Lit. When she’s not writing, Iris plays piano and takes too many pictures of her cat.
