I Am What Is Missing

You are significant. Even in the most benign of moments, your life has value - you simply have to look for it.

Because of me, we are a pair. We sit in the car in silence - save for the idle of the engine - on an island where rush hour does not exist, yet traffic crawls like frontier molasses on a January evening. The sun hangs low in the sky - not so low as to be considered dusk, yet low enough that we are blinded by it as we make our way infinitesimally forward, on the lookout for bison. Sunbaked smears that were once insects cling stubbornly to the windshield - they are the only things we can see with perfect clarity.

Traffic gains some momentum, and we trundle along on our Sunday drive, rounding a bend that hugs a hill that should be green with grass, but is instead yellow due to the July heat and the profound absence of precipitation. The repetitive click of loose gravel lodged in the tire tread fills our ears as the hill gradually shields us from the sun, a small respite from its oppressive heat - a tangible fact we’ve been unable to escape for the past two days. In the shadow of the earth, my arm dangles benignly through my open window; my eyes slip closed almost without me realizing.

We continue in this manner for some time, exactly how much I’ll never be certain. The tranquility of the ride and his gentle humming of songs that predate our great-grandparents lulls me into a purgatorial stupor - not cognizant enough to be awake, but too aware to be asleep. As he navigates the unfamiliar terrain of the island with the calm assurance of a local, I am left in a liminal space of my own making.

Suddenly and without warning, I am jerked from my trance by the percussive sting of a downpour on my outstretched arm. I startle, gasping a bit and emitting an ambiguous noise of alarm. I yank my arm back inside the vehicle, frowning petulantly at the now-gray skies as the thirty-year-old power window motor whines, the window itself sliding into place with great effort. Cradling my wet arm to my sweat-damp t-shirt, I turn and ask him grumpily when the storm moved in.

The laughter dances in his eyes before it bursts forth unselfconsciously from his mouth. At first, I’m offended - I’ve just been jarred from my state of rest-adjacent, and he has the audacity to laugh at me, to guffaw in the face of my discomfort. My jaw drops a little in indignation, and I’m about to give him an earful. But instead, I take a moment, and for reasons I’ll never understand, I try to keep the situation in perspective. I’m hot and tired, but I am not alone - we are both sunburnt to the point of peeling, we are both caked in salt from both sweat and the lake, we are both exhausted to the point of delirium. I clamp my lips together in an attempt to suppress the laughter building in my chest and fail spectacularly - it bubbles up and spills, the high frequency machine-gun of my giggle contrasting directly with his full-chested, metronome-steady amusement. We laugh together with reckless abandon, our inability to speak the perfect ridicule for the absurdity of my offense at nature.

Our unison sigh sets us off all over again.