Home

At the place where we stop

to empty our bladders and fill up the fuel tank,

the sweet grass sings with the sound of dust.

The air is rank with gas fumes and roadkill.

We take turns to piss; urine glows golden

in the sunlight and pools at our feet

on ground parched past drinking.

Loose jeans hang on narrow hips,

looped with a rust-coloured belt.

He zips up and says, “Only the cockroaches

will be left alive when it’s all over.”

-

While one drives the other reads yellowed paperbacks:

Doris Lessing, Toni Morisson, Margaret Atwood…

There’s something about old ladies who write.

When it’s too dark to see words we play Leonard Cohen,

howl the lyrics

at the gush of breeze that flies in from the open windows

and fills our throats with lust.

Afraid that the border agents would find the weed

stashed under the CDs in the glove compartment,

we took the long way across the continent.

-

In a small town stretched thin across the road,

we pick up two cheap girls and a bottle of easy booze,

bring them back to our motel room.

The whiskey soothes our throats,

contracts our stomachs into hard fists.

“You don’t waste any time,” they say when

we abandon their bodies to reach for our glasses,

clink them over the chasm between us.

“We don’t have much of it left.”

-

We wake up late.

Don’t like driving in the morning anyway

because the sun gets in our eyes.

-

Two unfinished novels lie in the trunk,

bound to be manuscripts forever,

kindling for the fires of apocalypse.

Somewhere between Brandon and Winnipeg

we leave the trunk open, speed until the prairie wind

picks up the pages one by one, unfurls our stories

behind us like the tail of a comet. A scattering.

-

We spot the house off a lush country road in Clinton, Ontario.

The car sighs to a stop in the deserted driveway.

He asks, “Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Dead sure.” We get out and stretch our limbs—animals

after a nap. Climb up to the porch in nonchalant steps.

Bang on the door until our knuckles ache.

Nobody’s home. 

My friend Sugar and I gave each other the same prompt: write a piece in which two male characters face the end of the world by driving out to meet a famous writer. This is what I came up with. Can you guess who the famous writer is?