Road Trip, Southern Ontario, 1999

We drive and drive until
we hit a lake.
At the edge of the lake
is a cairn.
The plaque reads,
“THEY DROVE AND DROVE
UNTIL THEY HIT A LAKE.”
My father and I
trade glances.
A cold breeze ruffles
his thin grey hair.
Behind us,
the car idles,
the doors hanging open.
I shiver. He locks my head
in the crook of his arm.
I place my feet on his,
and he walks, giant-like,
toward the water,
carrying me with him.
“Take me to your planet,”
I say.
 
In the car again,
we are silent. The
sports announcer
says something about
sports. If we had been
born a century earlier,
and in Paris,
perhaps my father
and I would be walking
our turtles along the
boulevard, being silent
in French.
 
In two years,
my father will be dead.
The car will be mine.
Children will crack
the windshield. My feet
will touch the ground.
Oh, also, I’ll have
one brother fewer. I’ll have
one brother. When the snow falls,
I will catch it
and put it back.

— STUART ROSS

(Originally published summer, 2002.)