Dime-store Magic - Connor Devore

There are only so many ways to get out of the car
from the passenger seat and none of them are romantic.
17 of them are hilarious, twice as many are demoralizing;
only a handful are fatal. The data gets fuzzy from there,
but I’m certain that more than half involve fussing with
the volume knob for longer than you could even imagine.
Think back to scared hands picking at the seatbelt
and ask yourself: how far is it, really, from one side
of the center console to the other? Must have been miles.
Leaning across that harrowed sprawl of sun-baked plastic
to reach you, no matter how much I wanted to, just
wasn’t possible. I ran the numbers.

You should start wearing charm bracelets. I’m worried
that minor spirits may be out to get you, many of them
are sure to be evil. I’ve already written your name in hundreds
of “Best Wishes!” Hallmark cards. It’s imperceptible magic.
We wouldn’t want them catching on to us. I just need something
to work. Avoid the DMV, the mystic forces there left me unable
to answer the phone for weeks. If you could just trust me on this one,
it would at least help me sleep: buy a pair of lucky dice.

I wish I could put my head in the VCR and fast-forward.
I would turn it up to 8x speed. Dozens of feet of tape ripping
out of your spool and into mine. I wouldn’t stop, not even
for the funny parts, until I found the part where we dance and our feet
move so slow that everyone thinks we might dance forever.