Backseat sublime
Like neon, but warm
The feeling of… Seeing the lights of a refinery, in the distance, during a late-night car trip, in that liminal backseat space-time. In that comfortable, rhythmic silence that covers, lovingly, the bobbing head of your sister nodding off, and your father’s tired rearview-mirror reflected eyes in flow-state. Your mother, pensive, lost in her paperback, and the steady rocking of the faux-leather seats, in the kind of car that came with ashtrays. And the warmth implied by refinery lights, seen from the backseat. Like neon, but warm as teardrops against that rear windshield behind the backseat we inhabit. Inhabited, at least. Still lied to back then, in a well-meaning way, by well-meaning parents and the systems that bear us, about what it’s like outside the car, and what refineries even are. Conveyed so carefully, cradled in the back of a hand-me- down Toyota Corolla. Child-eyes wide, still wet, seeing the world through rain-dappled glass. How I wish I could feel the warmth of those lights again. But even if we could—somehow still fill each seat, I suspect, being older now, that the silence of refinery lights would read as awkward if anything.
This is so evocative, beautifully done!