I drive, and the trees run past with a breath of air but without a word, or maybe they have spoken, but too quietly to be heard over this music. The timid bass knocks on the door of this leather seat, to inquire if I might be home. It's then shown in, and introduced to my shoulder blades, my ribs, breastbone. And I have never felt so hollow.

My eyes are frozen, pressed against ice cubes, if they could somehow be warmer. If I could somehow be warmer, and melt these ice cubes away, then dabble these fingertips in their wet ashes and play them across the wheel. My piano.

The car in front of me has red taillights. Their rays croon and soothe, lighting like feathers across my dirty windshield. Their light is water spreading itself thin over oil: getting acquainted, mingling. But the water is red, so perhaps it isn't water, but wine. I wonder if wine mixes with oil, then forget why: the very clouding effect wine can have on a girl's mind.

I'm no longer sharp. The noise bouncing off the inside walls of my cracker-thin rib cage has worn my edges away, like the river running through the Grand Canyon, or a tornado encased in a Styrofoam box. I wonder if small white flecks of bone are whirling around with the bass, then forget why: the very effect wine can have on a girl's insides.

I am still hollow, even with his tornado and the non-biodegradable pieces bouncing off my walls, walls that I should paint sometime. Pastels are too soft, too degrading to a soft person pleading wordlessly to be made hard and sharp again. I'd love more than anything to paint these walls green: the color of my mother.

The red from the taillights oozes through the glass; too thick and persistent to be shed with merely wipers. With the soft pitter-patter of raindrops this red falls upon my skin, diffusing, to get acquainted, mingle. They cover beauty marks and scars, which are me.

Meanwhile, the painters inside are almost done. They are painting my roses green. They do a fine job, really. And when they finish they will turn to pigeons, the discarded doves, and fly up and up through the underpass that is my throat. They will wait, perched, behind my tongue and wait for the slightest mutter to depart.

They'll fly away at the quietest cough, but should I sneeze, they'll be sent backward and upward, into my head already made cloudy by the wine splashed across my window and spread like butter over my skin. In my head, the pigeons flap their wings, the mayhem sending feathers falling until they come to rest like the thinnest down pillow. But I cannot lie down.

My fingers, wet with this wine, finger-paint the steering wheel, leaving fingerprints: my many signatures. If I press hard enough, the green paint on my walls, still wet, will seep through pores and get acquainted, mingle, with the red. This is my Christmas. Christmas in June. June and 11:56pm. 11:56pm with wine that isn't mine.