Young John Takes a Country Ride...

We were driving along alright. No real incidents for the past 20 miles or so. I wondered if she had changed her mind or not. I wondered a lot of things though.

"Young?" she whispered in her sleep like she always did. I was begining to wonder if, in waking hours she remembered me at all, or if I, like a vision haunted her as a dream that one cannot shake eerily does in the dim winter daylight.

"Yes?" I expected her to roll to her side and forget having ever called for me. I expected the sky to fall in heavy crashing waves on the road before the glaring red hood of the car outside of ever expecting her remark.

"Young, I love it when you drive" She smiled and twinkled and sat spritely and playfully up in her seat, readjusting her chaise and hair and camisole where necessary.

Most of our rides continued in silence. I usually played something inspiring, something soft, something the hum of the engine would disguise to her delicate ears in her relaxed horizontal position. A position from which I gained much and she lost little in beauty, grace and my admiration.

But not today. Not on what had already become the most interesting day in the history of my life with her. No. Today, she was alive. Today she was free. Today, she had obtained a refreshed spirit from her short nap and she had something different in her.

"Do you?" I had almost discounted her voice as my imagination. Prone to wander, I had learned in these long rides not to trust it; It often overtook me when I would chance to look over at her, soft, vulnerable, unchanged, and dreaming of her escape. Violent with expression, it would call out to me "She only lies so you will see her" or "she only sighs in her sleep because she is dreaming of you" or "She only cries so because she longs for you"

But today I had to test it. I had to wait it out until it was thrown out the window by her own soft sweet voice and it was left behind on the highway.

"Yes, I really do. It gives me time to think. But you know, I had always wondered where you drove me to"

She would wonder no longer, nor be surprised at our route. I drove her over low rolling hills just outside of the city. Hills that she photographed time and again. Hills that she obsessed over. Hills that I just saw as hills and that romanced her very soul. Hills that provided slowing, rolling curves that I could easily navigate with the windows down, hopping a draft would catch her hair and reveal her bright pink cheeks.

"Young?" She held it sweetly on her tongue and then let it fall across her lips and linger in the air before her.

"Yes?"

"Thank you" And then she was gone. She rolled down the window as I came to a stop into the town and she was gone. Just as quickly as she had awaken and seen me and made out our whereabouts with certainty, just as quickly as she gave me hope that she truly saw me and wanted my company and pleasure in her, she was gone.

I, for once, and not undone by this. If she knows me enough to smile and draw out from herself a whisper of me, I am not undone.