By Emily Blair
Operating heavy machinery
in your sleep is not recommended because
dreams were invented long before brakes
but here I am at the wheel again
weaving around trucks and trees and
baby carriages. What carried anyone this fast
in prehistoric times, animal spirits?
I jump a missing piece of freeway
screaming my head off because dreams were invented
before mindfulness or calming inspirational sayings
that compare life to a rainbow or a river
and tonight I am Sandra Bullock
clipping parked cars as I swerve through suburban streets
which means you are bomb-expert Keanu Reeves
who praises my crazy driving
and never leaves no matter how bad things get
who couldn’t act even if he tried because
he’s too real for that and
deep down he knows that life is not a movie
it’s a wild dog whipping across a grassy plain
it’s a delirious dream
where even when we’re both about to meet our doom
at a hundred miles an hour
you can still say
Why don’t you just wait and see what happens?
with such sincerity that
if I keep my eyes on your face
instead of on the road
I can almost
forget how fast
the years are flashing by
Emily Blair's work has appeared in Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, The Gettysburg Review, cream city review and Indiana Review, among other places. In 2014, she received a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship in Poetry.