She curses the brake lights, all of them, this whole red river of stopped cars, and I want to press my hand to her cheek and tell her: stay. Stay in this exactly.
Look at what she has. A metal room that is warm because her own body made it warm. A song she has heard a thousand times, coming around again, and her thumb tapping the wheel without her permission. The specific smell of the coffee gone lukewarm in the cup holder, which she will not drink and would give anything to smell if it were ever taken from her.
Her sister on the speaker, complaining about nothing, about a coworker, about the weather, filling the little heated room with a voice.
She checks the clock. She sighs the sigh of the delayed. She does not know she is being held. The engine idles under her like a sleeping animal, and the sun comes through the windshield and lands on the backs of her hands on the wheel, and she can feel that, the warmth of it, and she does not even notice she can feel it.
Twenty minutes. She thinks she is losing twenty minutes. Oh, love. You are inside twenty minutes. You have somewhere to be and a body to carry you there and someone who will be glad when you arrive.
The traffic loosens. She lurches forward, grateful, already gone from this moment.
Go well.
Be late for everything, someday, for as long as you possibly can.