Road Trip, Southern Ontario, 1999

Summer, 2002 / No. 8

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.