Tonight the mountains press against the darkness, two shadows in contrast, like a black sweater with darker black pants or sweat on dark leather interior.
Yesterday, I received your last letter.
I don’t dream often, or at least I don’t remember, but I do dream of you.
I press the gas pedal down a Wyoming road—the only lights here my own, shining like gauze through the snow while my laughter flies out the back window and down highway 84 that summer outside Lubbock, my legs stuck to the seat of your car as I told you it’s Coahuila, not Sonora. A straight shot.
Suddenly lights blare, a semi curving the mountain.
It’s like waking up next to someone when you’ve been dreaming of someone else all night.
—
Jill Talbot is the author of The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir (Soft Skull) and the editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction (Iowa). Her essays have been published in AGNI, Brevity, Colorado Review, The Paris Review Daily, and more.
Artwork by: Jake Weirick
