murray is a 1996 hyundai elantra station wagon. she might be blue or she might be green. i think she's turquoise. she is a girl. she is my best friend.

there is a pair of dice hanging from her rearview mirror. black and white. one, three, six, las vegas, sewn carefully, mechanically in china or taiwan or some such similar.

what happens in vegas stays in vegas. the city keeps your deepest, darkest secrets, your wildest passions folded safely between the sheets of grime enveloping her. because she doesn't care enough to tell. she doesn't look your way long enough to know.

murray knows my secrets. she and i share knowledge of some things no one will ever know, not even the nurses changing my bedpan in the hospital or care center or asylum when i finally go completely mad. she knows but she won't tell. she won't tell because she knows it would kill me, and cars don't betray their people.

she's seen me at my best and my worst, my highest and lowest, and everywhere in between.

drag racing and figure eights and singing alone with abandon and dance parties and "name that movie" and picnics on a whim and giggling and hallucinating lizards and exploring and sitting on her hood for an hour looking over the river and writing and thinking and crying and screaming and hitting her steering wheel over and over until i bruise and driving through stubbornly unspilled tears and swerving and hitting and speeding and released anger and being pulled over and sliding on ice and fear and facing it and spinning and driving just to go and escaping and freedom and rolling the windows down and surrounding myself in music until my heart beats with the bass and i think i'm going deaf but i don't care because she and i are one.

she accepts me for who, for what i am.
and i love her for it.

ink :: graphite