we were driving in your car that weekend to new hampshire. you were moody when you picked me up at my house and i remember driving the first hours in silence. it was winter and the trees were bare. i was watching the landscape pass by the window from the passenger's seat. i fixed my eyes on the sun as it set behind the hills. i tried talking to you. but your responses grew shorter and shorter. it wasn't always like this between us - but sometimes it was. you wanted me to get mad or mean, but i never did - i never could. so i just got quiet. i can get paralyzed in that quiet. when i was growing up, my brother would be in trouble - and in order to avoid making situations worse, i'd just become invisible. or he'd make me so upset at the dinner table, that the tears and gasps for breath would leave my voice lost and broken somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
i remember finally saying something to you - asking you, probably, why you were acting like that. i don't remember anything that was said after that.
the sun had set and we stopped in carlisle at a mexican restaurant for dinner. you sat on the same side of the booth as me. we drank margaritas. it felt good to be with you. we drove the rest of the night in a new kind of silence. playing otis redding's version of my girl on repeat. we were always doing that - falling in and out of love with the quiet of the space we left between us.
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