Octane

I stopped for gas eleven miles from the ward

and the fumes tore the present open—I

was fourteen in the garage, the floor oil-scarred,

him kneeling in the heat of mid-July,

pouring the mower full. His hands

were enormous and they never shook.

The can tilted at the angle a man commands

by practice only. I held the funnel. I took

the sweetness in without knowing it would last

longer than his mind. The pump clicked off.

A woman asked was I all right. I passed

my hand across my face. The highway's rough

noise reassembled. I drove the rest.

The ward's clean corridor, its sterile air

scrubbed free of memory. He sat, his chest

rising slowly, hands flat on the chair,

and looked at me the way glass looks at light.

My shirt still held the fumes. I took his hand—

warm, open, still. No grip. No recognition. Right.

The gasoline between us. I had planned

to speak. Instead I knelt there, breathing it—

the fuel, the pour, the garage floor.

His hand in mine. What the body won't acquit.

The pump, the fumes. What I drove three hours for.