Stories from The Moon / Cuentos de la Luna

You are in a car with your father. Coldplay’s “Clocks” is playing on the radio. When you read the word father, this memory plays in your head in a short loop. The tight seatbelt across your upper body, the trees lining the road, the cold wind getting inside the windows, sometimes you get a glimpse of his profile in the driver’s seat. Sometimes you are heading home, sometimes you are leaving home. You are driving somewhere that isn’t real because the road he used to drive was diverted West many years ago and doesn’t exist now. He doesn’t exist now either, but the song is always there. 

You are in a car with your mother. You must have said something awful, so awful that she slapped your little mouth with the back of her right hand. You don’t cry. You make a mental note to remember that rings hurt. Maybe this is why as an adult you constantly “lose” your rings. Your mother is crying in the driver’s seat. She keeps saying she’s sorry but she doesn’t reach out to hug you. 

You are in a car with your fiancé before he became your ex. You are driving home from your favorite diner. Suddenly he is angry and swerves his car in and out of traffic like a maniac. You ask him to pull over. You beg him to pull over. He doesn’t listen and the engine is getting louder. He yells at you things so hurtful that they go mute in your memories as if someone had used Wite-Out over his words.