​Jalopy

by Taylor Turner

​

Each night it rolls where cold wind tolls—

The engine hums, the pistons drum.
No faces show, no headlights glow,
Yet there it waits beyond the gates.

​

The stars glow dim, a fateful hymn.
The stars fade into moonlit nightshades.
The road unwinds, it bends, it grinds—
The path ahead streaked with red.

​

Its doors unhinged, its edges singed,
paint so cracked, so faded black.
The leather’s split, the dashboard hit
by time’s cruel hand, the fall of sand.

​

Its windows gleam like fractured dreams,
the doors unlock—they click, they knock.
Swinging wide, it calls me inside,
a silver grin—“Come step in.”

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They laugh, they sigh, they lull, they lie.
No steps approach to claim my soul.
No end in sight, no morning light,
No home, no rest, no heart, no chest,
no beats, no breath, no depth, no death.

​

And now I fade—a shade astray.
My voice is thin, it pulls me in.
It calls my name, it comes to claim
this jalopy, this phantasmic body.