Here

Here
Benjamin Bouvet-Boisclair

I’ve been slipped parking tickets under my bones like I wasn’t supposed to be where I was. I don’t drive around town too often. My parents think I’ll crash, think I haven’t had enough experience, think my hands don’t have enough bent corners, rough creases, wrinkles like the Vermont State maps stuffed into your glove compartment. Before we drove over the bridge, you asked me to read them for you, but I am useless when it comes to reading interstates or highways or badges with numbers; I am just stupid when it comes to my finger following the lines. If we stayed in this town, if we didn’t take a road trip, I could drive us places. I don’t need a map here— I know the short cuts, and the long way just in case you have a tank full of gas and it’s a Friday afternoon and Monday is a national holiday. Or, if you’re in a hurry, I know the one way streets you can get away driving a palindrome. I know the crooked spots over the hills, the spots where cops don’t bother looking, the spots where you can see stars putting their cigarettes out on the arms of clouds. And I know where we can park for a whole night, like a secret in the clutter of this city, underneath its own seat. We can be a couple of crumpled receipts, or a dirty penny and a movie stub, or a gum wrapper and a CD that will skip like our last conversation, wedged in my head: “The french-french-french toast was good. It was nice to see-see-see—” You, have always been a ‘been there’ disguised as a Lego magazine I receive monthly at my parent’s house; I haven’t read one since I was 12 years old, but the Lego company doesn’t fuck around with their subscriptions. And neither do you.

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Benjamin Bouvet-Boisclair is currently a SUNY Cortland undergrad student working towards a Professional Writing degree. When not writing he is playing board games with enemies, shooting hoops, or doing magic tricks for invisible crowds. This is his second submission to Slice of Life.

Image: Lighting, By Leigh-Anne Fraser