Samantha E. Allen

“We should be storm chasers!” 

You nod eagerly. We could be two sovereign sisters, riding in your old tan Corolla down the loneliest highways in search of the highest kind of adventures. I picture us like this, frozen–you are hanging out the passenger side door with your ass perched on the door, wearing that pretty floral dress, fingers wrapped around a camera, pointing the lens at the sky. I am driving, chain-smoking, and blasting Vivaldi. Smoke weaves between your thighs and curly blonde hair. 

We are storm-hunting wild girls, chasing hurricane Savannah. 

There is something I need to tell you. I stopped writing for a long time because you said you could not understand anything I wrote. Now we are apart, and I am confined to your smartphone. I spend a lot of time scrolling through our old pictures, drafting text messages to you that I never send. 

I cannot put these feelings into a text. So I will write them down, but I cannot send you a letter. I am afraid you would cut up the letter and eat it, or you would banish me the way our mothers did us. Or maybe you will ride around town with it fixed between your pointer and thumb, screaming that I must have been in love with you. It is too lonely to write you a letter. 

Was I in love with you? I wonder. The thought makes my brow twist into a curly fry spiral, like a ringlet of your hair. I do not know if we were in love. We always had boyfriends. 

You are not thinking of me when you are out to sea with your boyfriend. Now husband. The father of your child. Remember when he was just the boy we smoked bowls with behind his grandma’s house? I am not thinking of you– but rather, I am watching you go out to sea with your boyfriend, now husband, the father of your child, wondering about all the time that passed us by. Whispers in the universe. 

I am thinking of what we were. 

Maybe we were storm chasers, or just girls who wanted adventure; the kind that turns your blood into electric currents. We were so many things. Sometimes, in the fall, I think maybe I should phone you. I would tell you that storms always reminded me of dark prophecies. Perhaps time swallowed us whole, or you drowned me in the tsunami of your tears. 

Maybe I am still a storm-hunting wild girl, chasing hurricane Savannah.