Starter.

Alternator, battery, catalytic converter.

All-weather floor mats. Silver sunshade. Headrests. Tal says the stains’ll clean up with FreedomWipe & elbow grease. We’re not afraid of a little hard work! Top-trim audio: twelve German-made speakers & a 400-watt amp. No one makes speakers like the Germans! Gym bag. Workout clothes. Still damp.  

License plates. Loose change, scattered, heavy on the pennies. The fuck was she collecting pennies for? Phone, three models old. Small gift-wrapped box. Glass digging into our palms, knees, scalps. Band-aids! Scissor jack, lug wrench, donut spare. Dashboard saint. Rhythm of the turn signal, still tick-ticking. Which saint? Who knows? Bearded, squinty—looks like a goddamn pirate, you ask us.

Bottle of perfume—stabby letters on a silver label declare it ADVANTAGE. KK says it’s high-end, sprays it on all of us. We smell like sexy sperm whales. 

Nail clippers, emery boards. Messenger bag, brown leather, inside of which: a literal shit-ream of paper. Never seen so much paper in one place! Purse. Zippy wallet. Weirdly heavy credit cards. Cashmoneyamerican.

Silver bracelet. Dog leash.

Advantage.

Airbags (passenger, undeployed)—Rickie’s Uncle Chop pays a Jackson for each. Used to be a U.S. Grant but Chop says times are tough on account of other people’s fault. Driver bag is blown, so fuck it. Owner’s manual. Tire gauge. Wrapping paper, shiny. Scented candle from the gift box: Clary Sage & Oud. Rusty-colored stains on our cuffs, sleeves, knees, wherever we’ve brushed up inside.

Questions! Questions, like: will that rusty shit come out in the wash? &: aren’t windshields supposed to not explode into little glass nuggets & sparkledust? &: the fuck is Oud? &: will someone turn off that goddamn turn signal already? Key fob. Receipts.

Hood ornament. Tal says he’s keeping it himself, on account of he chose the rock & did the literal heavy lifting. We abide. Ibuprofen. Eyeliner. Eyedrops. Teeth.  

Xmas in June! Five gold-ish rings, four factory rims, three bank pens, two EPT kits, & a ass-ton of glass in our clothes—

—which’ll keep slicing us until we strip down & burn them in the dumpster out back of Heritage Auto. Celebrity hand cream. Gate opener. Funky smells—gas metal, wires, body—in our sinuses. Stanka mulling the nature of Oud, but it’s like, focus, motherfucker, some things are just mysteries.

Pause.  

& then a moment of awe & wonder when a gust of summer wind scatters all those white pages & they flutter & twirl all pretty & yonder-wampus through the sparkledust sky & away into the dark. A funny sound comes out of one of us. Maybe me?

It’s the little things. You know?

& then the turn signal is in our heads again, ticking & ticking, & did we not fucking shut that thing off already?

Shopping bags: so many! Canvas, plastic, Etsy-woven. Candidate totes. Wet wipes. Lip balm. Lumbar cushion (more stains). Dog, who’s so fucked-up broken we only have him for a few breaths.

Vague/inchoate lesson re: fragility of lives of others.

Empty space where Rickie was, last time we looked. Travel mug from JingoMart & cold shitty light-roast inside. Road flares IN CASE OF EMERGENCY (ha!). Delta-9 gummies, blood-orange flavor. 

Splatters, various.

Brain-spikey smell, like acetone swirled with fluorescent light. From what, don’t know don’t care. Swimming heads.

& lessons! Lessons about how this remains the land of opportunity, even at 3AM on a dark county road in a town that’s East-Ass Nowhere but the heartcore of America. About how pirate saints & Swedish steel are no match for granite & gravity. About how He who has the big-ass rock & good aim gets the hood ornament. About how our parents are right when they pop their tallboys of Bootstrap Lite & say: you either get with today’s incipient neo-Nietzschean rebalancing of sociopolitical prerogatives or you get crushed. Lessons about physics, civics, other ics. About acceleration, momentum, force, power, survival, fitness. About sparkledust, Liberty!, & the Oud of it all.

Reading glasses. Mirror sunglasses. So much glass everywhere! & the way the mica in Tal’s rock glitters in our phonelight! Thrummy blood-rush when we imagine the bass on those German speakers sucker punching the shit out of the night while we dance & whoop & burn clothes & celebrate hard work & its manifold rewards. Tin of breath mints. The fucking turn signal! Somehow & still! Views of our flickery firelight selves in the sunglasses on KK’s face.

But not the lady. Brooke argues with us, says we shouldn’t just leave it to wolves & weather & whatnot when their mom has a darkweb friend who’ll pay for fresh, but we say Brooke, bruh, that’s dead fuckin weight right there, you carry it yourself if you honestly believe your mom is that cool.  

Even now Brooke’s still bitching about the fortune we left behind.