Pulling Over

What happened: the rabbit died
because I struck it. I struck it
quick & so I suppose I struck it
well, if we want to put things
that way. I should have seen it
but I didn’t, not through the five
consecutive sneezes which jolted
my glasses from nose to chin.

Once I had unflinched myself,
I joined you outside, where you
were crouched over fur, hands rooted
into thighs. What are we supposed
to learn from this, you said to me,
& I said the issue was what
are we supposed to do
now, with its body & ourselves.

I did not believe this.
I worried that you would
suggest a solution, breathe it
into rabbit ribs still steaming
ribbons into darkness,
touch me & tell me to touch
you back. Did you want
to drive, I asked. You looked
at me with lopsided shoulders.

We stood roadside for a length
of time shorter than evening & longer
than I wanted before you buckled
me back up. I drove the remainder
in one go, seven hours,
until I pulled into the driveway
of somewhere we had said
we wanted to be. My hands had
set around the wheel & you,
you unclasped each
finger wordlessly.

Idaho

well while we’re here won’t we wish
away whatever it was that wet-whittled
our weazened shins into another upcycled
weathervane—the rainbowed stare of
software widgets against our wheeling

eyes approaching twilight as the wide-open
western white swarms with that old glow—
pale yellow whorls of wastage that apologetic
wave following a wrongful wresting twisted
into rows into wonky views from between

window blind-blades beneath the awning—
no cloud winds through this woven land we drive
no workhorse over rust-peeled railways allow
no waffled jaw its quiet swallow-waver—

we sew ourselves away some sweet away

Xiadi Zhai is from Boston, Massachusetts. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has recent or forthcoming work in Bennington Review, Court Green, F(r)iction, Notch, and Quarterly West, among others.