Love Song on the Inner Loop

by Linda Simoni-Wastila

Wipers smear the fine mist into a greasy, rainbow residue. Taillights flicker red, then fade into the grey crush of monotony. She sighs, impatient, lifts the stainless steel mug of tepid coffee to her mouth as the headlines drone into tinny white noise: Marines press to remove forces from Iraq; gunman opens fire at Cleveland high school; Turks angry over House Armenian genocide vote. The radio segues into the scratchy, breathy guitar wails of Shiver; and the familiar, forlorn yearning flames from her gut to her chest, catching her mid-sob. The sky opens, God slices through the lifting fog in brilliant gilded diagonals; for a perfect instant, the city's towers puncture the horizon, shimmer into opalescent marble minarets, the receding cloudbank transmutes to snow-capped pinnacles. She smiles through her sip and her heart wings east, over the ocean to another continent.

6S

Linda Simoni-Wastila, author of Small White Pill, can be found most mornings on the metro to Baltimore, scribbling madly in her notebooks or gazing out the window, day-dreaming of people and places faraway. She also blogs and strives to pen the perfect haiku.