When the teacher asked

“Now, which of you has a sacred space?”

the students began to clamor,

about the bustling walkway through the city,

the barbershop that made hair smell

like wet noodles in the snowy air,

the wooded single-track through the ponderosa pines

studded with screaming birds,

the café that smelled like warm butter and boasted

the incessant thrum of a coffee machine,

even the abandoned construction site where

sawtooth dinosaurs in macabre ballet poses

danced amidst stray dogs with tattered tails.

Only in the back, there was a boy,

whom the others heard and grew quiet,

and when he spoke, they nodded:

he talked of the comfort of putting

the key into the ignition

of his grandfather’s whispering old blue Buick,

and of turning the key,

of the CD’s noiseless slide into the player,

and the bass thrumming every mile,

of each calcium syllable forming and crumbling on itself

within the chapel of his mouth,

and his fingers making fractals on the dash,

and the wheels spiraling,

and going and going.

Priya Krishnan is a senior double majoring in neurobiology and physiology and music.