the car slid, and halted...
slid, and halted...
down and down the highway...
like a goldfish bowl in an
earthquake.

he scraped his fingernails
along the steering wheel:
an engineer's joke,
he thought.

we have no more control over where we're going
than we have over how fast we get there.

traffic ebbed, traffic flowed.

the floating excrement
of carbon fumes and
talk show radio waves
flooded his gills.

meanwhile, he grazed
the empty seat beside him,
as pristine as a newly planted
plastic castle.

It would be nice, he thought,
for a playful hand to poke at mine.
while I was shifting gears.

...to distract me.