Parking Lot

By Asche Keegan

 TW: Adult themes

There is something almost sultry about neon pink lights reflected on the dashboard. It brings back stories of sex, drugs, rock & roll, the fifties, and classic cars under the moon. The revving of the engine in time with the couples making out in the back, rocking the vehicle to and fro in their haste to get out of there before their mamas come to yank them home.

The diner's lot has been filled before; kisses stolen between licks of a peanut butter ice cream cone. Inside the parlor, an old couple feeds each other the cherries from the tops of their floats, perhaps remembering younger days themselves.

Teenagers work the counters—the same as they have for seventy-eight years. Though they may change out fast, the place itself still looks the same.

Turn the keys and the engine roars to life, blue dials flickering to life. For a moment, the atmosphere holds, motors purring and neon lights flickering. The smell of bubble-gum fills the air, along with the muffled grunts of the phantoms who may once have used this very vehicle to go about their business.

Then the radio snaps on, flooding the car with Christian praise music and banishing the specters of fantasy and the imagination.

“hurry home, the ice cream’s melting.”

Yet that feeling can't be shook, the idea of pedals underfoot, ice cream on the lips.

“Oh the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God,” West sings.

But the dream fades, leaving behind only a newborn adult, clutching tight to the innocence and naivety of the past.