BACKSEAT BLUES

Backseat Blues

I had a dream the other night. This morning, I was thinking about the world today in 2025. My thoughts took me back to 1955. My poppa owned a 1953 Chevy. We drove everywhere in that car. I remembered an event in 1955. I was five years old and as I watched the trees, mountains, deserts fade away as my poppa drove that Chevy like he was king of the road. Mom and Dad were cool. Now I am seventy-six. I closed my eyes today, drifted back to midnight as I lay in the back of that old yellow 1953 Chevy listening to Hank Williams on the radio sing, '‘I am so Lonesome I Could Cry.” I can still hear my poppa sing that tune softly. Mom would look over at Poppa, smile, then turn back and smile at me. I would hum the tune, then cry. I looked up at the stars, and I asked God, the Universe, “Was I Born Before?” For a day I dreamed about my archives, and I am now smiling at the end of the evening before midnight as I can still hear my Poppa sing to Hank Williams as we drove that old 1953 yellow Chevy down life’s highway.

I was five,

Already humming in keys I hadn’t learned yet.

My fingers found the piano like it was waiting for me

Not to teach, but to remember.

I sang before I understood the words,

But the feeling?

That was mine.

That was older than me.

Poppa would nod,

Eyes closed, tapping the table like it was a drum.

Mom would smile,

Her voice soft, her gaze steady.

She knew I was not just playing.

I was channeling.

The living room became a stage,

The kitchen a concert hall.

I sang to the plants,

To the pets,

To the silence between meals.

Every note was a dispatch,

Every chord a question:

Was I born before?

I lay in the backseat of my daddy’s ’53 Chevy.

Mountains rising like old hymns.

Hank Williams on the radio,

“I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

And I did, quietly,

Not because I had lost anything.

But because I remembered

Something I had not lived yet.

I asked myself,

Why am I so lonesome?

Was I born before?

Did I ride these roads in another skin,

Another name, another ache?

The song did not explain it.

It just confirmed it.

I knew the blues before I knew my own story.

Was I born before this life began?

Did I cry to songs I hadn’t yet lived?

Was I dreaming in the backseat

Of a stage I’d already played?

I was five, but I knew the blues

Like a name I’d carried through time

Was I born before?

Or did the music make me remember?

I dreamed in the backseat

Of cactus shadows, palm trees swaying,

Roses blooming in desert hush.

I lay down, feet propped, eyes wide

Watching the night sky

As stars passed by like old stories.

Country tunes filled the car,

Blues wrapped me in a mythic trance.

Yesterday, present, future life

All braided in the hum of Hank Williams.

I thought about the dance

On the reservation,

Where I learned to rise

On my tiptoes,

To move like memory.

Now we have left the reservation.

Time drives us over mountains and desert.

The cactus looms in my head,

A sentinel of something I knew

Before I had words.

Was I born before this life began?

Did I cry to songs I hadn’t yet lived?

Was I dreaming in the backseat

Of a stage I’d already played?

I was five, but I knew the blues

Like a name I’d carried through time

Was I born before?

Or did the music make me remember?

I dreamed of stars,

Moons, suns,

And then I cried silently

As my dad sang with Hank:

“I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

I hummed with Poppa,

My mom beside him,

Listening to the beat

Of dreams from younger days

Along life’s highway.

I lay in the backseat,

Crying softly,

Asking myself,

Was I born before?

I was five,

But I knew the blues

In my heart and soul—

From another lifetime,

On stage,

In a laid-back way.

Was I born before this life began?

Did I cry to songs I hadn’t yet lived?

Was I dreaming in the backseat

Of a stage I’d already played?

I was five, but I knew the blues

Like a name I’d carried through time

Was I born before?

Or did the music make me remember?

created, written, edited by

Vicki Lawana Trusselli

Trusselli Art

California