The Car

I was sitting in the car in the parking lot.

Waiting. The engine was off.

The windows were up. And I'd forgot

the sound of myself, the small scoff

of breathing, in and out,

filling the small box, the metal room,

this space between me and the gloom

outside. My breath. My spout

of sound in the silence.

The windshield started to fog.

Little clouds from each exhale,

accumulating, a veil,

making the glass opaque as a log.

I was fogging up the car

just by being alive in it.

I thought about leaving, moving, quitting,

but I sat there, trapped in the jar

of my own breath, the loudest sound

in this small room underground,

listening to myself

like it was a kind of death.