The ocean highway

There was a boy who lived in the little house just off the highway.
The house with the chipped red paint and the overgrown backyard that ran wild and reckless like a jungle.
It was what the boy liked to pretend it was, anyway.
He was just an explorer in the center of it all.
It didn't even matter that he was in shorts and a T-shirt most of the time. 
They were the closest thing to explorer clothes he had. They were the only clothes he had. It didn't matter.
The cars on the highway, if you listened closely, always sounded like the roaring waves of the ocean.
The boy had never been to the ocean, but he liked to imagine that's what it would have sounded like.
I think a part of him knew.
Or at least his mind was always far away.
Sometimes, when he was asleep, there would be an accident on the highway.
Then there would be a lot of voices and flashing lights.
His mother would leave and he would stay. It didn't matter.
The world was strange and different from his jungle and his ocean.
It was the ocean that always helped him fall asleep.
The sound of the cars on the highway was the one thing that was always consistent.
It remind him that everyone else had busy lives.
It reminded him that he didn't. It didn't matter. He was going to see the real ocean someday.
He would make time.
He would make time to escape inside his mind and pretend for awhile.
Because to him, it was always better.