The metal-encased time capsule in my parents' driveway.
It was like a time capsule, this car.
My old Buick, ready and waiting, sat parked outside my parent’s house all summer. Inside was the detritus of somebody’s hurried departure. Mine.
Here were the new-looking receipts for things I had used, well, for three months. Those well-worn things now had well-preserved receipts. Here’s a bag for the clothes I bought back in April. I left those clothes in Yemen, victims of a weight loss massacre.
I was the last to touch this stuff, but I can’t remember it happening. What was I thinking at the exact moment I slammed this plastic bag into the back seat?
This stuff is mine. This car is mine. This seat is my seat, and it’s adjusted for a body, my body.
Yet it’s all so new — all this stuff is the middle part of my telescoped life. I have a bed and a few totes hidden in a friend’s apartment in Kentucky. I have the rest of my worldly belongings in this car. A few items fill the bags I took to Yemen and back.
Here I am, collapsing the telescope, reassembling my life of items.
Maybe soon they’ll feel like mine.
Despatches | {Wyoming} 