Stonecrop Magazine

You got a fast car on the cheap and dreamed of summer. Special order parts littered the garage like leaves, mom flinging up her arms and spit-shining your oil-stained cheeks. Not-so secretly proud. And sad. He would have wanted to see this, would have loved the dog-eared catalogues, the puzzle of it, bringing life to something dormant. And you, looking more like him each day. Puppy dog limbs too big for you still, stretched like canvas over who you’d become. But his eyes, forehead crinkling over serial numbers. Already there. Always already there.

You sounded most like him when you spoke in cylinders and torque, so much it hurt sometimes. Not that we’d say anything. The sting felt almost nice. Real. You dreamed in diagrams, explained the origins of the LT-1 in hushed tones, reverent. How you made metal holy I’ll never understand, but you guided my hands along the drive chain and I too felt blessed.

The first snow blew in before you could tarp it, and our cheeks stung while we pulled the plastic taut with you. It whipped and snapped in the wind and you felt embarrassed, defeated. But we didn’t mind. Mom rubbed feeling back into your hands while you sniffled, still desperately young. In the morning it peeked out from the drifts, bright and unafraid.

By the time they melted, you were gone.

The catalogues kept coming. I tried to hide them so mom wouldn’t have to see, but when I opened the cabinet I found the stack she’d got to first. We were always most alike. Crocuses pushed up and the world kept on. The smell of oil lingered longest. It still makes me think of you, even now. Nutsedge is choking the muffler and milk thistle fills the wheel wells. We’ll move it someday. Or maybe we won’t.

I too dream of summer, bright and unafraid.