Alice Kim Hawari

Road Angel

We load. Aches in the lumbar smoke to the heart.
Small bodies in back; in front, big legs fold in tight.
Our little road angel says—we’re almost empty, but we need to go far.
My fingers play with the cracked vinyl
of the pocket holding dimes and pennies.
Soccer balls roll into backpacks, suitcases,
coffins. Oh god, you’re right, I say, and I
wait for his smile in the mirror, because I
love it when
he sees me see him.
You saved us.

Columns of indifferent steel and winking windshields madly fume
gasoline. I steer, the circle worn and faded, a hardened lasso,
spinning. Slipped, slotted in between two.
The highway spills red darker than blood.
Stuck, like in quicksand, we watch the minutes,
time — money, fall off the clock. I
break the quiet, did you know that
Palestinians pay
one thousand dollars
for a truck to carry
their sofas, their blankets,
already covered in ash,
away from bombs
whistling down,
to flee to another
cage where
shimmering leaflets
twinkle floating like
paper birds
squawking,
leave now.
Will anyone save us?

Our conversations weave meandering and tearful.
I stare ahead, gain speed, wind down a mountain’s
ribbon of asphalt. What if our brakes cut out, we
lose control, why must we hurry, sink further into
dispassion. I shake my wrists, to feel alive because I
hate the numb. Giant gray clouds, like an invading
spaceship, swallow the road, the sky, gone the horizon.
I’m scared—our angel says—we might die.
I want to fly.
Our hair, our elbows billow out of windows half-opened.
Shoes, pots, memories, socks, locked
together on four turning wheels,
one revolution at a time.
I’d rather drive.

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Alice Kim Hawari broke away from the tech world to write fiction. She earned her BA from Yale University. Her short fiction is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly. Hawari is working on her debut novel which was runner-up for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. She lives in California with her husband, three children, and lazy, tri-colored dog.

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