there is one BLT sandwich left in the bag & nobody will touch it, too afraid of rye bread crumbling in hand, of something else cracking open in the engine and dribbling out the exhaust pipe: a trail back towards what we are trying to escape. consider: if we drive fast enough, far enough, it will all melt back into the horizon, nothing more than another cloud in the rearview mirror.
dad insists that he’s full, full of enough sleep to drive through the night and into the next decade.
& brother says that it feels like it’s been a century since his feet have touched solid ground, wants to know where the next gas station is, where the next house will be. if it will be nestled in suburbia or if it will be another lonesome shack sheathed in corn, slowly being blown away by prairie wind.
mom tears the sandwich apart slowly, methodically, like how one would remove newspaper headlines, using only two fingers to keep ink from smearing everywhere. she hands soft bread and insides to the rest of you, keeps crusts for herself. you taste the sun in the tomato slices, mourn the singular piece of bacon in your piece. dad turns the radio up, rising house prices, economic downturn, all news bad for digestion.
brother is feasting next to you, and the kid from the next car over is staring, staring at this family looking for someplace to stop along on the highway, trying to leave something behind.
Yong-Yu Huang is a Taiwanese teenager who has lived in Malaysia for most of her life. Her work has been previously published by the Heritage Review, Eunoia Review, and The Rising Phoenix Review. In her free time, she can be found struggling with the flute or humming the Doctor Who theme song.