A man that wore a long sleeve white dress shirt in the middle of a blazing July glanced at my license and let me pass. Through the chain-linked fence with barbed wire edging. My boots making love to an inch of mud. A morning of hard rain just fast moving gray clouds now, Rows of cars in different phases of destruction. This automobile cemetery. You were dragged here after our futile attempts to revive you in the glowing moon failed. Abandoned in some snow bank in South Jersey. Still the smell of burned rubber, oil and transmission death. “There you are!” One hundred and ninety something miles ago you sparkled in the dealers lot. You lit my eyes up. There is something special when it is brand new, never used, first owner. That new car smell, that perfect purr of engine. You took me around the universe and back. My dependable lover. Avoiding close calls. Kept me safe. Getting totally lost with me. Just you and I so many times. Looking so devastated now, the drooping air bags, bleeding transmission fluid and cracked windshield. Your final impact of love and devotion was that no one got hurt. Except you. Creaking your door open for the last time. My meager valuables thrown into a bag. Taking one last glance of you as I slop away. The sun breaks free and casts a final spotlight on you. The suction of the mud holding me there like you don’t want me to go. Still so beautiful and forever under the black racing clouds and hints of blue sky.
