Sunflowers

When I was in college, I used to drive my grandfather’s Impala, which he gave to my uncle, who eventually sold it to me for a couple of hundred dollars, because he was cheap.
 
It had a murky brown exterior, with scrapes, and a dented bumper. The seats smelled in the summer. In college, I circled the blocks for 20 minutes looking for that one spot big enough to fit. How big was it? Well, one time, I put a ladder in the back seat and closed both doors. I drove six friends down to a dance club. Under Reagan, broke as I was, I looked in the backseat and said, if I put some curtains up, I could live here.
 
One time a Chevette hit it. The car collapsed like a paper box underfoot. My car had a scratch. I used to drive around town, and if someone tried to cut me off, I’d say, “Dare you, motherfucker.”
 
What did I care? That kind of freedom doesn’t come twice.
 
It got me to my first job in Kalamazoo. A coworker said I should buy a new car, and when the transmission started to go, a neighbor down the street bought it, fixed the problem, and afterward I saw my Impala in his driveway, or on the road, where I would sometimes look to see if it was me behind the wheel. I moved three years later.
 
I like to think it’s still out there, somebody’s hooptie, or a planter in an urban farm, with daisies growing from where there once was a hood, and sunflowers reaching out from what used to be windows, tipping toward the sun.
 
And my bare feet up on the dash, the rest of me hidden in a forest of leaves and stems, in what used to be my life.