1986 in a Small Town in Ohio by Shuly Xóchitl Cawood

1986 in a Small Town in Ohio

We cruised, riding around in someone’s older Civic, or borrowing a parent’s Impala, or taking the beater that was on the verge of breaking down or rattled or needed a muffler but why bother now? We drove by the home of every boy we liked. It never took us long, a mile to East Enon Road, a mile to Fairfield Pike, through the few neighborhoods—IGA Land, College streets, the houses near Ellis Pond. We cruised by Ha Ha’s Pizza and Ye Olde Trail Tavern but mostly by the arcade where boys let quarters fall out of their pockets, and sometimes we joined them but often we tired of playing Ms. Pac-Man and wanted something more, something else, and we drove to Young’s Jersey Dairy where they sold day-old donuts after midnight and we squeezed into those red vinyl booths, and the boys would be there, the girls would be there, and we would buy Diet Coke and stay out late and eat day-old anything and carry whatever this was into our futures, some of us leaving home and never coming back, some of us going to college and working summers at Glen Helen or Carol’s Kitchen or washing dishes at The Wind’s, some of us never going far in the first place. But before the future, it was boys we longed for, boys we wanted to notice us, boys we wanted to change our lives—so much happens and never once happens in a small town—and death would come early to two of us and shift all the trees on Mills Lawn and none of us would take Route 68 to Xenia at night anymore, yet we still thought we would always have more of them—these days that back then never sped up, only slowed down, and in all the years we cruised, we never spotted one boy we liked through any house or apartment window, but we talked for hours about what might happen if we did, and we rolled down windows and the smell of seasons blew into the car, and we knew it, all of it—what was and what never would be—and our imaginations ran ahead of the car and behind it as we held in our breath and sped toward the edge of town and tomorrow, turning up the radio, ready to arrive.

*

Shuly Xóchitl Cawood teaches writing workshops, doodles with watercolors and metallic markers, and is raising two poodles and a dwindling number of orchids. She is the author of six books, including Something So Good It Can Never Be Enough (Press 53, 2023) and Trouble Can Be So Beautiful at the Beginning (Mercer University Press, 2021), winner of the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Sun, and Rattle. Learn more at shulycawood.com.