my colon took the wheel somewhere outside marathon, texas. he shoved my brain to the passenger side of the full-length front seat, the faux leather farting as brain slid and fumbled for purchase at the window. colon just screamed: we haven't any time! the cops are on their way! it's been an odd couple of days, for sure. i am stuck in the middle seat between lungs and stomach. stomach complains and grumbles: you said we could stop for something to eat! there was a BP in marathon! i'm fucking hungry i said!

colon turns around and puts a gun in my stomach's face: i goddamn told you already, there isn't time for that anymore! i can't keep taking all that shitty food you eat. it burns! colon turns back to the front and lights up a cigarette, rolls down the window, lets the window blow through their thinning hair. colon showed up at my rogers park apartment with his gun pointed at me. he told me to get in the back seat "next to those two idiots." we were hot tailing it down to mexico, he said. colon held up a liquor store in buena park that morning, and the CPD was on their trail. and once we cross state lines, he said, we'll have the feds chasing us. his voice was rough from the marb reds, but it was happy, too.

colon was given three months to live. that's what brain told me somewhere between milwaukee and oklahoma. he'd colon's medical history in a giant three-ring binder which he fingered through and read from, reciting diagnosis and prognosis verbatim from the files. brain tried to keep her cool. she kept us on the right road, researched cheap motels where we could crash last night, and brushed up on their spanish duolingo lessons: hola, mi nombre es el cerebro.

but brain had stopped talking once we left marathon. google maps said we should've gone east from there and crossed the border at ciudad acuña. but colon kept going south. stomach didn't seem to notice or care. he never did. and lungs hadn't said a word since we left chicago. she just kept looking out the window, smiling at the passing scenery, breathing quietly in her small corner.

the feds are already in the rearview mirror when i realize where we are, where we're going and what's next. straight ahead is santa elena canyon. holy shit, i think, we're gonna thelma and louise right off the edge...

colon turns the radio up, and through the shitty connection bruce comes through suddenly like a clarion call. colon starts to sing shaking his shoulders and feeling the music:

in the day we sweat it out on the streets

of a runaway american dream...

at night we ride through the mansions of glory

in suicide machines…

brain is resigned. stomach is clueless. as for me, i wasn't sure the part i was to play in this unfolding psychodrama. in a way, none of this has anything to do with me. i am just the hostage, carried along for the ride. but when the moment finally comes, it is beautiful. the car is suddenly weightless and i can feel the lift of my body relative to the heft of the car. stomach explodes next to me and a billion monarch butterfles fly out the windows into the sunlight. colon puts his hands on the roof to brace himself for impact, still screaming:

come on with me, tramps like us

baby, we were born to run...

brain laughs and throws her binder out the window. its fluttering pages disband and are carried away by the school of monarchs. it is lungs who takes my hand and guides my breathing on the way down. the air is ripe and cool. i can't remember the last time i really noticed. though in a way, i always knew it would be me and lungs on our last descent.