The miracle of wanting to go somewhere again, after months of numbness.
The car thudded. Then it creaked. Then — I swear — it meowed. And then it stopped.
I was somewhere on a mountain road, sixty or seventy kilometers from home, and I felt the familiar cold hand of dread. This is it. Tonight I’ll sleep in the car. I have mandatory insurance, but the kind that looks good on paper and doesn’t quite reach you when you’re stranded on a cliff at dusk.
But my old Mitsubishi — God bless the hands that built her and the soul that gave her to me — had paused for dramatic effect. A breath. A theatrical moment. Because that is her character, she is battered and dented and beloved, and she has taken me places no sensible vehicle would agree to go. I stroked her roof and told her she was magnificent. My golden hen. My mountain witch.
Continue reading https://exegi.substack.com/p/the-road-that-meowed-and-stopped
