Prompt #3 for Mrs. Fever’s summer writing project “Reminiscences” is RIDE. And when I saw it, I knew I had to share a poem I wrote several years ago about the conception of our son.

We had been out at one of our favorite restaurants…rich Italian food, a bit too much red wine…and suddenly it seemed like an excellent time to head on up the mountain to fuck in the back seat.

It’s important to note that, regardless of our drunken impropriety (I’m not condoning our reckless driving choices), we had been trying for some time to conceive, after having lost our first.

Likely, letting go of the anxiety and stress of trying was exactly what opened the window to success.

Conception

Your grandfather’s Lincoln was in desperate need of a paint job.
But snaking up the road to the ridge,
I am secretly comforted by the anonymity it provides.

Nestled between snow-covered peaks,
heated breath feathers patterns on fogged glass,
and skin sticks to weathered leather.

In the back seat,
we become sixteen,
fumbling and insistent,
all hands, and mouths, and thighs,
some version of what we would have been
with less experience
and more awareness.

Winding back down the mountain,
I am high.
We are twenty-nine,
and life
is just beginning.

We drove that old Lincoln up a winding road to a look-out point, but as it was well past the time for tourists, we weren’t terribly likely to be caught. I remember it difficult, finding a position that would work…fucking in a car is never quite as easy as they make it look on screen. It wasn’t so much that the sex was great–I don’t even remember if it was. It’s that we both let go for a moment (me, more than him, as I was the one most uptight about “getting things right” and having sex at the right time, under all the right circumstances). Fucking in a car was so far off the map of “right” that it became just that…right. And even though I have no real proof that I we conceived that night, I have a feeling that we did.

And hey, it’s a good story.