After supper on certain summer evenings,
my mother (her eyes clouded with wanderlust)
would herd the family into the station wagon.
Down desolate one-lane byways,
we drove into deepening darkness,
hurtling towards no particular destination.
In the backseat, I tallied rectangles
of amber light set in black silhouettes
of suburban tract houses. If I was alone
on foot, I’d surely have pressed my face
into each of those windows like
an orphan waif in an old Dickens novel,
salivating, starving for a taste of other lives.
Lately, I travel different avenues
past well-lit abodes, not of strangers
but of neighbors and good friends.
Doors open and beckon, the inhabitants
singing out sweet invitations,
but I am still unable to enter
as if I was a plump bride
jammed into the narrow threshold
(neither in nor out). Before me—
jubilant faces continue to call
my name. Behind me—
the night, lonely and abandoned,
drapes seductively around my shoulder,
hums into my ear (the engine
of a single automobile
droning into the distance).