"Zaustavi".
"What?"
"Zaustavi...Now."
I heard her turn her head to look back at me.
We had been driving alongside the road for hours now, stopping only to throw the newspapers at the empty solemn houses that stood on abandoned driveways.
My fingers trembled, weary from the numerous newspapers that had been rolled and tied with sharp blue plastic bands that had cut into the surface of my skin. The bands were strewn about the dusty car and I could hear my daughter rubbing two of the grainy-textured things together.
"Stop the car I said."
"Dear, I..."
"Stop it. Now." I said more fiercely.
The dry humid air of the car was suffocating my throat and my ears were now ringing from the whizzing of air that escaped through the cracks of the dingy window.
It had seemed the car would not stop; it just kept going and going. I could never see where we were going, darkness had now filled my eyes for several years now.
My legs uncrossed and my feet could detect the car's movement, trudging along that battered old road.
I could tell that she was looking at me and stopped the car, lurching forward as she parked the car to the side of the road.
Her hands were on the keys, now jingling as they dangled from the keyhole.
The whizzing at least had now stopped, but the sides of the car pressed on me, squeezing the very air out of my grasping lungs that were stuck within my throat.
The car was becoming smaller and sweat poured down my face. I realized the AC had been turned off.
I shook now and gripped the handle of the small door, quickly swinging it open.
The car had been parked near a ditch leading to cow pastures and fields of lavender that spread across as if an ocean of glistening grasses.
I fell out of the car and stopped for a moment, the dirt still clinging to the knees of my jeans. Shaken, I scrambled to my feet and began to run.
I held my hands outwards, searching for something to grab unto uncertainly. I knew my wife was in the car, watching, probably even resting her weary head on the old broken wheel.
All at once, the heat softened, a cool breeze leading me forward as if a tender embrace. After a few steps, I stood, letting my cut fingertips braze across the healing soft stalks of grass.
I closed my eyes, allowing the air to enter into my chest, and, as I closed my eyelids, I saw.
I could see the clear blue sky that illuminated the narrow disappearing road ahead. I could see the golden stalks surrounding me, waving in unison as if a chorus. I could see that bright little red car my wife and I had just barely bought. I could see her watching me with her large soft brown eyes, opened in fear and anxiety.
My daughter sat in the back of the car, leaning her head against the green car seat that held her mischievous self from jumping around.
I could feel the presence of the desert-wasteland yellow hills that surrounded the road.I knelt into the grass and touched the dry earth, feeling the purple flowers that, at moments, burst from the Earth's veins.
The breeze again carried me, lovingly, and I could feel the tightness of my ribcage dwindle. The power was returning to me and the breeze began to gently blow the clouds of doubt and fear away from my mind.
"Baba..." I heard a child's voice say.
I turned sharply.
I opened my eyes now, alert to all sounds.
Her little feet crunched the grasses and I felt her small fingers close on the palm of my hand.
"Let's go Baba..."
I closed my eyes again to see her brown wild hair and rumpled frock blowing with the wind.
I let her lead me again back to the little car.
I sat back in the car and swung the door again, clumsily letting the handle snap and creak.
I turned to my wife and nodded: I was ready to go back on the never-ending and obscure yellow road.