Learning to Drive by Meredith McDonough

While dropping cheerios
that multiplied on contact with the car floor,
and accidentally memorizing the lyrics
of all of Whitney Houston's radio hits
as you traveled from schools, grocery stores, homes, hotels
and all the innumerable destinations
of your slow childhood
you unwittingly became expert
in the sensation of coming to a stop
in a vehicle weighing several thousand pounds
that feels like an extension of your own small body.

You are astonished when you attempt to teach your girlfriend
who has mastered the theories of Industrial Engineering
and who grew up running the labyrinthine streets of Shanghai
has not learned the undulation of slowing.

Hurtling forward in a metal cage,
much like a yolk in an unbroken egg,
you feel the same fear
as the day you decided you would not learn to swim
floating in the ocean, sipping air
moving your limbs without coordination
achieving neither forward nor backward
trapped in a machine you didn't understand.