The Purse Marathon

Cecilia and I were newlyweds,
Our marriage not yet a week old,
And we were in the process
Of moving from Los Angeles
To Miami, Florida.
We were towing a trailer
Loaded with all our worldly possessions,
Doing the highway marathon
To get there as quick as we could.
That meant long hours
Of tedious driving
Sandwiched between
Bouts of deep fatigued sleep.
Early one Mississippi morning
Cecilia left her purse
In a gas station restroom,
And we didn’t realize it was gone
Until we were already in Florida
Late that evening.
We were able to figure out
Which station it was
From our gas receipts,
And it had been found.
We didn’t know
Where we would be staying
Once we got to Miami,
So we couldn’t figure out
Anything else to do
Besides doubling back
And retrieving it
No matter how dog tired
And road weary we were.
At least we had sense enough
To drop the trailer,
And made much better time
Without that extra load.
When we got there,
All the cash had been removed.
We tried to make it back to our trailer
But we had been on the road
For close to twenty-four hours straight,
And were so exhausted,
Neither of us could see straight.
We stopped at a dumpy, little, old,
Dilapidated, wayside motel,
Hoping we could grab
A couple hours of sleep,
But the local bed bugs
Had other ideas.
They were out
In a bloodthirsty show of force,
And we tossed and turned
For a few sleepless hours
Before we gave up
The foolish notion of rest,
And got back on the road.
We looked back on that ordeal
As a baptism by fire,
Figuring if we could survive that
We would have
A pretty good chance
Of making it as a couple.