You got a new car: a 20 25 Tacoma. It’s practical you said: look at the 6 by 7 truck bed! Sure 23 miles to the gallon isn’t great but who’s counting? You are I guess when you laugh and tell me it’s your last car—consider the commute times the distances you drive now which don’t add up to be much since work is closer to you than I am here across the country—I get it, I said, it’s practical

but I liked the Ranger better. I don’t tell you this, how it felt inside the cabin, you and I bumping heads over speed bumps against the steel frame, slow morning drives to zero period algebra, how real it felt unlike the leather of Family. The word is what I want to mean, but your mother tongue is Vietnamese. Instead we circle around the center. We drive within the lines watching the odometer tick, time, you holding the clutch, I gripping the nines: