'Rules of the Road'
Finis Origine Pendet
This summer, I learned to drive the people I love out of my life. To the rock-studded shores of Galveston
beach, high tide murmuring
I come bearing gifts. Hurricane Laura’s leftovers of murky
water, plastic nooses,
pier splinters fished out from between crooked teeth
riggings unraveled from the seams of the Gulf Coast,
whose coastlines crumble under the leaning timbers of
homes that never healed.
Budweiser shards glint like the stained glass hands of
Jesus himself, prying the wooden beams of a Louisiana
church apart,
a brown body on brown cross drags itself onto sand.
The trip back is always shorter.
On the back window of a lemon yellow sportscar, a coiled
constrictor’s fangs open in black ink
Don’t tread on me. An army of red brake lights gleam
Right blinker on, check the rearview, the side mirror, over
the shoulder
Of the highway, reverse here if you’ve missed your exit.
Glue each car’s headlights to the bumper in front of them
and all eyes on you.
Below, the nation’s veins unfurl in hazy red-and-white
lights in a hurry to return home
Crash through the guardrails. Learn the sensation of
flight, of free-fall, the only drop-tower outside a
theme park.
Beeline for the yellow car. Plow right into the side, your
car is bigger, he’s probably not buckled up.
Grip drifts from ten and two to Chick-fil-A Sundays: off
the clock. Honk honk honk. Stay in your lane, bitch!
Eyes up, past the boarded-up businesses on Main Street,
the shattered windshields of cop cars, the two crowds
of protestors
Unaware of the other until convergence around a corner.
And they do not run as if the police finally came, when
you’d try to
Cross the blurred line between villainy and heroism,
fluttering
Fairy godmother curled into the pistol muzzle, bones
stronger than a riot shield and
Lighter than conscience.
Flee not as if rubber bullets nip their heels before
ricocheting into flesh, eruption to
Face the music of strangers down the street, of feet
pounding asphalt into angry welts
Opposite sides embrace, long-lost lovers melting into one
another’s arms as home
became unwelcome, and solace found herself in the
streets we drive past.
I don’t want to hear about this George Troy guy under
my roof!
No sirens. A hearse to the house across from us.
A procession in silence, in masks, bloated eyebags,
stained T-shirts, and flip-flops.
I ask my friends at drivers ed Where will we go? with that
vertical ID granting sixteen-year-olds
the greatest freedom imaginable.
The new water park, SAT practice, to work, to the
protests, to Galveston, to the border, ’cause why the
hell not?
To my boyfriend’s house, to my girlfriend’s house, to no
one’s house because I have no friends in this hellhole
suburb and live only through unspoken thoughts, a
fantasy where
Hearses do not escort my neighbor Vivian
Miss Laura’s victims
or George Floyd.
Instead, the casket fills with what I wish
I could say,
Stop the car.
Editor's Note: Kendrah Su ’22 was awarded a gold medal in the 2021 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards for this poem
This article first appeared in the spring 2021 issue of The Exeter Bulletin.