I am driving in my car and I am alone. Sunflower seeds lie packed into my left cheek. One by one, I wrestle one from the herd, placing it between my front teeth using my tongue; and then, the left forefinger and thumb rise to remove the shell as my teeth move a fraction of an inch closer together until the shell cracks. I hold the shell in my fingers while my tongue digs out the seed and any remaining salt. I remove the shell--sucked dry of any flavor and discard the fragments into an empty gas station coffee cup that sits in the cup holder. The 16oz cup is about 1/3 full of discarded shell bits. I have an abnormality in my cheek, a sort of pocket or cave where my tender skin has been reshaped by the salt of the seeds and shells.

It's a tactic to stay awake. A way of keeping my concentration sharper. The crunch--a necessary component. The tedious rhythm of a long, solitary drive in counterpoint to the simple circle of seeds to cheek, to teeth, to tongue, to fingers, to discard pile. Salty crunch seems necessary when it's 3 in the morning, when Orion watches over my shoulder, when I've been driving for hours and have hours to go. I am leaving, returning, I don't know which. Hardly any cars to pass or be passed by as I climb the pass out of Seattle and head towards Moscow.

In this part of Washington, the rest stops all have volunteers serving cheap coffee and semi-stale cookies--by donation. Of course, I drink the coffee (one packet of white sugar and 3 foil topped cream containers) and eat the cookies (those no-name vanilla and chocolate sandwich cookies) but they are soft from their exposure to the night air. It is cold. Brisk. Crisp. It's the kind of air that freezes my nostril hairs if I breathe in through my nose--good air.

I think and remember a day in Alaska, the warm body of a Morgan between my thighs and the air freezing my nose--glass sharp shards when I inhale. I wouldn't be able to move much or far or stay warm without Sonja but with her, I am perfect. The dangerous tingle of my skin on cheeks, lips, nose, fingers, perfectly balanced by the safety of her heat. All I have to do is sit on one hand, leaving the reins a bit loose so she can find her own footing on the ice and snow or lean over and bury my face in her main. I love the smell of horse sweat. It's some part fresh alfalfa, sunshine, and animal. I know that when I get off, my jeans damp with her sweat will cool very quickly and become uncomfortable. For now, she and I, we are at peace and enjoying a moment together in the brief winter light.

This kind of cold has a sort of smell to it. My smell, her smell somehow missing. The smell of the Birch or the Douglas fir missing. It's almost as the smell of rock salt--dry, separate. As if I could detect the presence of oxygen, nitrogen, chloride. The smell at the rest stop is not the same. It's wetter and laced with exhaust from the many vehicles that cycle through. Something is the same though, a kind of absence of volatile life.

I drive fast, confident in my acuity. Driving lulls my mind into a kind of revery. I think. I see. Images from poems I will write come to me. I think of a friend and the taste of her something like the hallow in my cheek left by the sunflower seeds. I imagine the speech of flaming bushes that line the freeway in Idaho. I think of the man whom I've just left and the man I have to leave in order to explore this new person. I am not in turmoil though. I know that escape is my only salvation. I will lose all the parts of myself that matter if I stay there wrapped in cotton batting. I need change like I need breath.