Nightmare

Alone
Early dawn
Chirping crickets
Rain pisses down
Barely perceptible
Beading up slowly
Forming one steady trail
of raindrops
On my cheap windbreaker

Fragments of broken glass
Carcasses of insects
Discarded cigarette butts
Crunch beneath my feet
The smell of damp pavement
Sickly sweet brown mud
Caked into my rubber soled shoes

Is that a car approaching?
Or only the wind
Rustling the soggy leaves of gigantic oak trees
Whose branches sway above me?

No.

The low grumbling of an engine
This is not the wind
The truck is cantaloupe orange and weather-beaten
Pockmarked with multicolored scrapes and dents
The windshield cracked
A jagged meandering seam of reflected light

He has obviously been watching me for quite a while
This is why he
Pulls alongside me
Rather than making me
Stroll up to the front passenger door
Which opens wide.

“Come on in!”

He is not at all what I expected
Young
Greasy, dyed orange hair
Sticking straight up in spikes
Metal tunnels stuck inside the flesh
Of each earlobe

Reminds me of some African tribesman
In the National Geographic
Mom left on the coffee table
For strangers to browse through

He’s unshaven
Smoking a cigarette held loosely between
The fingers of the right hand

I am silent
Stepping inside
Setting my pack down
In the deep, oval floorboards

He does not look at me as he talks

“I’ve always liked big guys”

I sometimes wonder if
Not being bone thin
I am relegated to a
Fetish only

Somehow separate from the ordinary
Something one grows into wanting
Or wants because he is eccentric
I was never picky, either.

He looks at me with piggish eyes
Eyes I knew about early in life
Eyes Father warned me about
Eyes that stare too much and linger too long

This is expected.

“Do you want to listen to music and hang out
or just do the butt thing?”

I am confused, honestly.
No one asks me to “hang out”
Does he expect me to be his friend?
He cranks up hardcore punk
Sings tone deaf to the beat of
Blasting cap drums
Throbbing bass
Screeching guitar feedback
Vocals that pierce and scream