On Wheels
Nicolas Stevens
The pufferfish that once swung like chaos from the rearview mirror
now gathers dust in the glove compartment,
waiting for the next victim to unknowingly reach their hand in.
Prickly enough to draw blood.
An obsidian letter opener
brought back from Belize
has long since disappeared
Somewhere between or under the seats.
The sunglasses holder filled with a cacophony of random objects:
A large bolt, a crystal egg, and a fossilized clam
that used to rattle violently at each turn,
now remains deadly silent.
Somewhere in the junkyard
my collection of oddities lies
waiting to turn to dust
abandoned between flights cross country.
It’s chassis too rusty, and its engine too moldered to start.
Nicolas Stevens is an undergraduate student who was born in Vermont and studies creative writing at Pacific University. He has worked for Pacific’s undergraduate literary magazine Silk Road: A Literary Crossroads as an assistant editor and has also had work accepted into the 2019 National Undergraduate Literature Conference and the 2019 Northwest Conference in the Humanities.
