Bridget Olson

Where it’s bitter and everything is blue enough to bruise.

You roll the windows halfway down
and the world climbs in without asking.
It smells of dead skunk and horse manure,
of cigarettes burning down to their filters,
of a morning that’s already given up. 

Mornings in your car typically arrive this way:
unstitched, unreasonable, unendurable.
Hair knotted at the nape of your neck.
Cold finding your skin and staying there.
Coffee seeping into your light-wash jeans
from a cracked cup with a yellow rose on it.
Everything is cut wrong today:
too sharp, too blue, too stubborn to soften.

You follow muscle memory and telephone wires

through eclectic pieces
of houses brightening, 

grass-lined rivers defrosting,

fences sagging, dogs barking,
and shirts hung that are still far from drying.

Piece by crooked piece

the neighborhood gathers itself.
Plaster saints gleam in the light.
Willows softly sway.
Coffee touches your mouth

like a soft and trusting love.

You are in your car
where the fig-blue sky has fallen into a soft languid light

that illuminates glittery golden dew on rectangle lawns.

Where the smell of the damp Earth rises from 

grass-lined rivers, as they glide by 

and murmur the secrets of this morning:

One day the pieces will scatter. 

You are in the car, 

surrounded by a prayer for which there are no words. 

You will eventually notice that you will miss this morning’s bitter

fitting together in your hands,

becoming something you loved.