Thirteen at Ninety Miles an Hour - Based upon a piece written the second before my birthday
A boy stepped out of middle school,
into the dismissal crowd,
A stranger called him \"sweetie,\" her laughter far too loud.
In sailor’s hat and leather jacket, standing by her car,
She claimed to be his mother, come from somewhere dark and far.
The police saw a bikini where a modest coat was worn,
Her tears of blood dripped downward as the fabric of space tore.
Her pinky fingers burned away and grew back charcoal black;
She sealed their mouths with peeled cheek skin to keep the terror back.
They fled in silence to the town to spray their warning sign,
A curse of Zechariah written down in painted line.
She led him to the passenger seat and took him through the street,
Where Halloween still lingered on the homes they happened to meet.
She spoke of old trick-or-treating days with friends she used to mute,
While Oliver just stared at her, unsettled and acute.
Until an orange pickup truck came swerving to a halt,
His real mom pulled her out the car and launched a raw assault.
With heads smashed on the windshield as the mothers fought and screamed,
The boy slid to the driver’s seat and drove like in a dream.
“Fuck you, moms,” he whispered out, and left the brawl behind,
Steering toward a wall that stretched beyond the human mind.
Inscribed with every hidden sin since history began,
Alongside a sandstone path where naked Hughie Campbell ran.
Held tight inside a death grip as a killer held him fast,
Hughie yelled across the lawn before the vehicle passed:
“Drive straight into the wall, kid! It’s a portal, you’ll survive!”
Oliver hit the gas in tears to keep the man alive.
Hughie flexed his Compound V and darted out of sight,
Saving the thirteen-year-old from murder in his flight.
The Subaru phased through the stone and entered open space,
A buzzing tube of cosmic blue beyond time, light, and place.
Stars and moons flashed past the glass at ninety miles an hour,
Before a blinding luminescence swallowed up the power.
When Oliver unclosed his eyes, the engine was at rest,
Upon a gentle, grassy hill where quiet birds progressed.
Cows grazed along the open plain beneath a serene sky,
And for the first time in his life, his racing heart felt high.