Six Admittances to Road Tripping in Unfamiliar States by Mar Bradley

1. I have significantly little business with Colorado, but rather much more with the
leather seats of my car. Two exes (George Strait, wrong state) live there; Colorado; car;
and I amuse myself with scribbled v’s of mountains. I’m following someone’s steps
down the 70, not my exes, although at least one also had very long yellow shoes. Blocky,
almost perfect rectangles, odd feet, but I won’t judge. Or I will, discreetly, to the cashier
at the next non-name brand gas stop. I’ll gossip a good few about how some man runs
these long highways, so I follow him. My wrists ache, and I long to fold my legs up
beneath me—criss-cross—and find triangles in the trees. Yellow shoes without point or
crease. I follow obediently, extending my ankle diagonal, keeping even speed. Someone
has yet to teach me about cruise control.

2. I pick up strangers, routinely. One tells me I’m too old to be lying about the color of
dashed highway lines, and I pretend the edge of my jacket doesn’t cover a dictionary
below my ass, keeping my eyes above the dash. We’re prone to disagreement by nature.
She tells me she’s a good country artist, and I refuse to look at her shoes, and she plays
something sweet through my stomach—plucking at the cords until I pull over and puke. I
leave her where she asks, wearing a red raincoat near the desert edge; she laughs when I
look for the v-trees. I miss her and puke again looking for a rest stop without branding.
The acid sears, the second time, and I perch on the curb by my car’s eye. While waiting
on oil for our stomachache, I try and imagine her fingertips as something real, pressing
down on my wrist to shift gears.

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3. I buy cheeseburgers at these non-name gas stations. A grilled cheese? Might’ve just
been an odd turkey club, here and there. The shiny aluminum wrap makes it
indistinguishable, and they’re playing Johnny Cash on their radio. I pay—have you
seen—Twenty on pump 4. I press the back of my body flat against my car while I eat.
Shoulders to the window, handle digging at my hip. I feel her rumble and swell. I yell to
the cashier to ask what cruise control is. My fingers are greasy as they fumble over the
wheel, streaking over plastic that catches the gleam. Even as I skip over the cruise-control
button twice. By this time, my ankles have become bloody extensions, circles that push
forward and ache to feel the ground. You know the good pressure. My headlights flood in
front of me in a long circle, yellow in my peripheral. You’d know what I mean—yellow
moon and the long highway, markers made almost golden. Triangles blot out stars on the
horizon, and my headlights crest, a wave pulling in over the Bell mountains.

4. I’m ambiguous aiming for the new ocean. I think I’ve seen a good few oceans around.
The Mediterranean was the best green-blue (famous, remembered, searching), but then
again I came up on the Gulf Coast. Jellyfish corpses that reached for my toes. I hid from
them in the sand. It was December and cold, and the waters were brown. I picked up
shells, mostly, looking for ones small enough to replace my teeth. Are there any strong
enough in East Texas? There’s a drought down there now. Dark seaweed collects like a
man a few stretches of beach down, piles overlaid into make-believe limbs and tight fur
clusters. There are a group of seagulls further, clucking amongst each other. Chicken like.

One has a dark strip hanging from its beak. I imagine its mouth replaces hands. I imagine
the same for myself and widen my jaw, squatting now to grasp a new shell right.

5. I hydroplane somewhere near the border, or at least I figure so. Are there lakes in
Nevada? I think I took the right even-o-numbered interstate. My mother taught them by
veins on her legs, and I made sure to copy them down. East to West, hand passing over
the continent like a flash flood—the highways catch me in their gullets. I think, three
seconds before I hit the other car, that I don’t recognize its license plate. I have no CD in
the car. My belly aches. I’m gnawing on the back of my tongue to match my throat-salt
until a car merges in front of me. The yellow feet vanish. I hit the breaks late? Probably
without a guide. My feet were under my ass. No one else watches as their smiling bumper
sticker kisses the windshield. When I wake up, there is a sea. She opens her mouth at me
in a way that means holding as much as hunger. I go and meet her halfway.

6. I started somewhere following the blue, almost cross color wheel. Not sure if it was
the sky; maybe another car. My mother owned one similar. I’m hunting for a yellow-
shoed man, I still tell the people I pass, rolling down my side window and yelling out
while we go seventy-eight-nine miles per hour. Although the hot sun has bleached the
yellow footprints brilliant, I repeat my chase over the phone and send it to newspapers. I
dictate it to my friends by voicemail. They cluck-laugh with me, and I’ve learned now
how to drive barefoot, not putting any pressure on the pedals. When I get ambitious, I
start to tell my passenger about the way it felt to fly—feet, tires smooth over asphalt, a

whine silenced and sprung to life. I started chasing a rainstorm, I’ll decide, heart
pavement-hot in my chest. She sounds like the radio when she laughs at me too.