Roadside Attraction

Polaroid by Ruby Mae Mimbs. © 2025, Tom Pearson

I lived there, hollow, inside

the belly of a brontosaurus,

at the Park N Ride on

the pale, pink side of US1.

Eventually, they came,

with waists cinched like saguaros,

            cowboy coffee in their cups.

When he got off the Greyhound

and kissed me, his breath was

sharp and searing—and his

five o’clock shadowed my cheek

with the polish of sandpaper—

I tried to keep up, but my

tongue was taken from me.

Made to look like wood, vinyl

paneled the rooms where

fossils filled the emptiness

of what we’d left behind—

mostly shadows and the

skin of yesteryear that marked

what had been, the shedding of

a rattler in summer, the dust that

settled.

There were three stories I told

him about the nursery,

the rain, the prophesy, feeling

safe in our solitude—

but when he opened my chest

of saddle blankets and

let them float and fall

through the open adobe air

of the attic loft, down

to the mezzanine below,

we tumbled after them.

A scrawled sign above the

transom foretold a

nursery that wouldn’t wait,

wouldn’t keep the heat; the

door that would not hinge

nor the wilted

wake from sleep. 

            Isolation,

I had no talent for it, but he

touched it and the rusted padlock

loosened under his insistence—

so, we tried on a

corrugated memory and were

momentarily porous

enough to moisten the matter

and make something possible,

if only for a ghost. 

---

Originally published in 3Elements Literary Review (May 2025, Issue 46).

© 2025, Tom Pearson